


Rule One: Don't Be Afraid

by AmityRavenclawElf



Series: Yandere Characters [5]
Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Black Reader, Canon-Typical Home Invasion, Character Study, Creepy Fluff, Emotional Manipulation, Family Banter, Family Fluff, Female Character of Color, I am just begging you to read the tags, Jacob and Renesmee are not romantic at all, Multi, Not second person, Obsession, Obsessive Alice, Obsessive Jasper, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, POC Reader, Possessive Alice Cullen, Possessive Jasper Hale, Praise Kink, Protective Alice, Protective Jasper, Stalking, Suspense, Yandere, human reader, no y/n, seriously starts off pretty creepy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:53:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 59,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23208802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmityRavenclawElf/pseuds/AmityRavenclawElf
Summary: "It was a day significantly lacking in clouds, so all of them were confined to the house. On the whole, they were at peace. And then Alice gasped, and Edward was treated to a brief barrage of images:A brown hand tucking a small, dark braid behind the shell of an ear. A slightly uncomfortable smile. An indignant frown. A school classroom. Blood, and entirely too much of it. A tiny, pale hand holding a warm human hand, applying nail polish. And a few more in a similar vein.It was doubtful that Jasper would much appreciate thatEdwardhad seen his second mate– or flashes of her, anyway –before he had. So, out of respect, Edward sprinted out to the woods, where he could busy himself finding some deer to joylessly exsanguinate until Alice was done explaining her vision."...Sadie Gilder is a high school student with a love for psychology, a strong moral compass, and a fair amount of curiosity. She is also Alice and Jasper's foreseen new mate.
Relationships: Alice Cullen/Jasper Hale, Alice Cullen/Jasper Hale/Original Female Character(s), Alice Cullen/Original Female Character(s), Edward Cullen/Bella Swan, Emmett Cullen/Rosalie Hale, Jasper Hale/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Yandere Characters [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1119474
Comments: 189
Kudos: 512
Collections: R's Twilight





	1. The Rule About Premature Judgement

The interesting thing wasn't that they were new in town. Sometimes people moved places; no big deal.

It wasn't even that they were new in town _and rich_ , although yes, wow, that was some ostentatious wealth they had.

The thing was that they arrived with so much _lore_.

Even before their first day at school, there were all sorts of explanations in circulation: the money was from various dead relatives; the doctor and his wife had adopted the rest of the family; it wasn't weird that they were all dating, because the ones who were biologically related weren't dating _each other_ , and no one was dating the thirteen-year-old. (Good. Great, actually.)

This town was not an inherently rumor-prone one. The abundance of explanatory information about these people almost no one had even met yet was...interesting. As though the doctor had gone out of his way to send out disclaimers ahead of time, so that no one had time to think it weird that everyone in his family was around the same age and dating.

Sadie stayed out of the discourse, even though she suspected the family themselves to have started it. She couldn't blame other people for taking an interest, but she was uncomfortable with the idea of gossiping (It violated two of her personally-held Rules: _Don't talk about people behind their backs,_ and _Don't form quick judgements on people based on little to no information_.), and honestly she doubted that the wealthy lived particularly interesting lives anyway.

That didn't mean she made any effort to keep from smiling as her study group spun outlandish conspiracy theories about them seemingly for the fun of it (in between actual bouts of schoolwork).

"Listen, I'm just saying, when it's that many kids, it stops being called a family and starts being called a collection," Kennedy said, spreading her hands and swishing her gaze over the other three as though waiting for one to agree or argue.

"No, it starts being called 'redistributing the wealth'," Natalie drawled, picking at her nail beds. "Anyway, they can probably hear what we're saying; the rich have ears everywhere."

Sadie rolled her eyes benignly and continued labeling parts of the brain for her Psychology midterm. Any other day, she would have taken the opportunity to practice what she liked to call Unlicensed Amateur Therapy on Natalie to examine her feelings of being observed, but exams came first. The social sciences had already become her favorite classes, even more so than the arts or language studies, and this was only her first year taking them; junior year, after all, had fewer required courses (or required prerequisite courses) than freshman or sophomore year had.

"So we're just ignoring my cult theory?" Colin protested.

"Yes," Natalie said bluntly.

"We were open-minded when you said that it was probably for religious reasons," Kennedy reminded Colin. "It was when you kept saying 'cult' that we moved on to better theories."

"What's wrong with my theory?" Colin, as per his usual unfamiliarity with the idea of personal space, was quite close to Kennedy's face as he asked this.

"Cults aren't funny. Say they're space aliens or something instead."

Sadie cleared her throat. "So, amygdalas, am I right?" She wasn't quizzing them, but Kennedy opted to treat it as though she was:

"That's the weird-shaped one; it's responsible for fear and emotions."

"It's _not_ the weird-shaped one, it's the caterpillar-head-looking one," Sadie corrected, "but you got the function right."

Kennedy pumped her fist in the air.

"Do me next," Colin said, scooting closer to Sadie. He was easily in a position to read the answers from her study guide, given his proximity and angle, but Sadie opted not to bring this up as she quizzed him.

Sadie was the first to leave, out of the group- not because of the unproductive gossip, but because she had chores and a dog and the only way to balance those responsibilities and get to sleep on time was to cut her time with the study group short. Her mother picked her up from the library on her way home from work, still dressed in her scrubs with her dark hair pinned up into an impeccably neat bun.

"How was work?" Sadie asked lightly, while turning the car's AC down on the passenger side. Her mom worked at the hospital. It occurred to Sadie that she might have actually met Dr. Cullen by now. But she didn't ask about that; she was not one to pry. She considered making that one of her Rules: _Do not pry_. But she doubted that that was a rule she could even hope to always follow; she was lucky enough to be mostly un-curious about the Cullens, but there were bound to be more interesting things to inspire prying, in the future.

"Work was fine. How was school?"

...

Alice hadn’t really been looking for much of anything, at least on a conscious level; Edward would have known it, if she had been.

They would be starting school tomorrow, in accordance with a weather prediction from Alice. Nessie would be homeschooled by Esme for at least the next year, because she was still growing like a weed and that would be even more noticeable than Carlisle's improbably young face, until it slowed down. The rest of them, though, were high school bound. But that would be tomorrow.

Today was a day significantly lacking in clouds, so all of them were confined to the house. Edward was at the grand piano, working his way through every variation of every song he’d ever learned or composed. Jacob and Nessie (the ones who least needed to hide from the sun) were playing some video game against Bella and Emmett (two reasonably balanced teams; Jacob and Emmett were about equally skilled, and Bella’s lack of investment in the outcome of the game set her on roughly the same skill level as Nessie, who was nearly three years old, now, but looked eleven or maybe twelve). The four of them were monopolizing the sofa and making no small amount of noise, not that anyone minded. Carlisle was in his office, upstairs, reading about recent feats in medicine and keeping himself available to his colleagues in a virtual capacity, if needed. Esme was in another room, making the minute final touches to the new house’s renovations; they had moved in only two days ago.

Jasper and Rosalie had just returned from a hunting trip; the latter was now having her hair touched up by Alice, in one of the chairs stationed around a dining table they did not use for dining, not far from the sofa. (The whole bottom floor of the house was essentially one large room, with only the barest semblance of division. Esme had developed a fondness for “open concept” homes; the only thing with walls around it, downstairs, was the kitchen, and those walls were glass.) Jasper, meanwhile, was standing completely still behind the sofa, watching the proceedings of the video game with disproportionate earnestness and absorbing the high emotions of the players.

On the whole, they were at peace. Light from outside was fracturing off of their bodies and sparkling across the walls, floor, and ceiling. Nessie kept trying to distract her opponents by using her gift to show them memories (though it distracted _her_ more than it did them), and in retaliation, Bella was tickling her side, and they were both laughing. Rosalie turned a page in her magazine and then made an appreciative sound, at the sight of the new model of Bugatti.

And then Alice gasped, and Edward was treated to a brief barrage of images: 

A brown hand tucking a small, dark braid behind the shell of an ear. A pair of lips quirked in a slightly uncomfortable smile. A pair of eyebrows lunging together in an indignant frown. A school classroom. Blood, and entirely too much of it. A tiny, pale hand (Alice’s, given the perspective) gently holding a warm human hand, applying nail polish. And a few more in a similar vein. 

Edward couldn’t tell which sets of images belonged to the same branches of the future; he didn’t have Alice’s exact experience of the visions, only her surface thoughts. But those thoughts were enough to glean the significance, so he stood from the piano while Jasper’s head was still swiveling toward Alice in reaction to her rush of emotions.

“I’ll go hunting now,” Edward announced, and met Bella’s concerned, honey-colored gaze with a reassuring smile before he streaked out to the woods, where he could busy himself finding some deer to joylessly exsanguinate until Alice was done explaining her vision to the others– most pertinently, to Jasper.

Vampires were inherently obsessive beings. Edward himself was no exception, though it had taken Nessie wistfully saying that she hoped someone would crawl through _her_ window one day to make him fully realize it, and realize just how differently things would have gone if his mate had been even the slightest bit less malleable to his peculiarities.

Jasper had rougher edges than Edward had.

It was doubtful that he would much appreciate that _Edward_ had seen his second mate– or flashes of her, anyway –before he, Jasper, had even known of her. So, out of respect, it was best to leave the immediate vicinity while Jasper worked these feelings out.

 _A second mate_ , Edward couldn't help thinking, somewhat annoyed by the development. _And just when everything was in balance._

…

"No, sir, this is people food," Sadie said, holding her dinner plate out of the golden retriever's reach. Brillig took the denial in stride; after only a couple more attempts to reach her food, he resigned himself to pitifully lapping at Sadie's knees, under the table. He was especially affectionate these days, as midterms had necessitated long study sessions, meaning she was home less often. If he tried to sleep in her bed tonight, she probably wouldn't stop him.

"' _But I_ am _a people,_ '" her dad said, in the voice they all tended to use when they spoke for Brillig.

"Canine Americans do not eat onions or garlic," Sadie said, lowering her dish to the table now that Brillig was not in danger of unwittingly poisoning himself.

"Oh, but they _can_ be science experiments."

Sadie sighed playfully. "I only tried to replicate Pavlovian classical conditioning _one_ time, and I stopped and apologized to Brillig as soon as I learned that standard psychological experiments involve more ethical guidelines than I was technically following."

"You don't actually have to debrief a dog," her mother interjected. "And you don't have to conduct an IRB-approved study if you want to test Pavlov's classical conditioning. On a dog."

"Still good to practice ethical guidelines," Sadie maintained.

"Oh, I met Dr. Cullen today," her mother added. "Over Skype."

"Really."

"Mm-hm. He's young, but he has a lot of references and he sounded like he knows what he's talking about. I'm optimistic."

Good news for the hospital, then.

Conversation moved through various other topics before Sadie was collecting their plates and bringing them to the sink. Over her shoulder, Dad remarked, "We'll go looking for cars this weekend."

She flashed him a grateful smile and said, "Sounds good. Thanks." She had never asked for a car, because material possessions did not interest her much, but her parents observed all the milestones of growing up (the real ones and the ones they themselves had created), quite reliably. 

At twelve, she had first been allowed to wear colored lipgloss and ride her bike unaccompanied, within the neighborhood. At thirteen, she had officially been allowed to have a significant other, though it could only be a nominal title and would come with no privileges. At fourteen, she had been allowed to go on dates (but only double dates with her parents) and also to wear foundation and non-pink nail polish, and to ride her bike wherever she wanted. At fifteen, learner's permit and driving lessons and a dog. At sixteen, her current age (but only for another few months), she was allowed to go on dates _without_ her parents, and she also had her driver's license. And soon, apparently, a car.

"You should look into what model you want."

"After midterms," her mother added. "You study cars after you study for midterms."

"Understood," Sadie said brightly. She plugged up the sink and half-filled it with warm water and dish soap while Brillig nosed at her thighs and her parents went upstairs. She plunged a hand into the white suds and sighed contentedly at the feeling.

...

The rest of the Cullens only got the swiftest of explanations before Jasper was led by hand upstairs to their room. Alice's exact words had been "We have another mate".

If Jasper's heart had been beating, its pace would have redoubled.

The joy radiating off Alice, even more than the unmatched beauty of her smile, was enough to sweep him up, to detach him from the sour smell of the paint Esme was applying to a wall a few rooms over or the adventurous music of the game being played downstairs.

Another mate. Him and Alice and someone else. He had never thought to want such a thing, but now that Alice mentioned it, it was all he needed.

"She's beautiful, Jazz," she informed him. "You love her. I love her. She's so sweet; she's absolutely perfect."

He could feel Alice's love; it tasted like nectar. The strongest, most dizzying nectar. She was already experiencing a mate bond with this person Jasper had not yet seen. To feel it secondhand...it was tantalizing. All of that love– a love that he knew belonged to him, too –and the euphoria that accompanied it...through her, he only felt an echo. "Where is she?"

He had another heart out there somewhere, out of reach, unprotected.

"At home with her family; she's a human now," Alice answered, a bit of sympathy and a bit of amusement mingling with her extreme joy and love- a tangy edge, added to the nectar. (Downstairs, Rosalie made an incredulous noise at the revelation that another of her siblings had mated with a human.) He had not meant to dilute her enjoyment with his desperation, but he _was_ desperate. She raised her hand and cupped his cheek. "We get the best outcomes if we wait until school tomorrow to meet her. You will need the time to rein in your stronger impulses. You don't want to hurt anyone."

He didn't. It was true that he didn't want that. But the want not to hurt anyone was minuscule in comparison to all the other wants. He had another mate out there somewhere, and Alice had seen her, _Edward_ had seen her, and he had to wait? He had to wait to feel the love Alice was feeling now? Jasper ground his teeth for a moment and felt glad that Edward had removed himself from the house; he was not taking his envy well, and his love for Alice didn't allow him to envy _her_. "What about tonight?" Jasper suggested. "Just a quick look while she's asleep."

Alice's eyes unfocused as she evaluated that future, and a shot of distaste ran through her, and her nose wrinkled as she returned to the present. "At school tomorrow," she reaffirmed, shaking her head. "She has a dog; if we go tonight, either it barks and wakes her up, or you kill it. Things don't go great if you kill her dog."

No, he imagined not. Still, Jasper wanted to pace the room restlessly; the only thing stopping him was his hunch that looking away from Alice would remove a great deal of his self-control. "Tell me about her," he requested.

Alice grinned, practically bouncing on her toes in excitement. "She's in our year, we can transfer to all of her classes, and her name is Sadie. Sadie Gilder. Middle name...Lily. She has two parents; they're alive and together, and they _will_ become an obstacle to us if we don't keep our heads on straight. No siblings, one dog. The dog is named Brillig; it's from a poem."

" _Jabberwocky_ ," Bella informed them from downstairs. 

Jasper twitched in annoyance at the interruption but said nothing that would further delay Alice's description.

"She does not have a significant other, but one of her male friends is very tactile, and there is a future where you kill him over it in class tomorrow; we really, really want to avoid that. She is extremely polite, which is good, because I don't see a future where we aren't both very weird upon meeting her, and her politeness compels her to shrug it off. When we do meet her, you are going to experience a strong urge to steal her away right then and there; resist that. If we stray too far from accepted human behavior too quickly, you will have to feel her fear, and you will not like that."

No, he wouldn't. Feeling his new mate's fear...Fear of _him_...He was sure that he would hate it. And now that he thought about it, most of his immediate impulses did involve things that would probably scare her.

Alice was right, as usual; he would need these several hours between now and tomorrow to maximize his control over himself. If he saw his new mate- Sadie -now, someone human and vulnerable and out of reach and unprotected-

"What if we have Jacob lure the dog away?" he asked.

"That's not how wolves work, ya dumb leech," Jacob called, with his mouth full of what sounded like popcorn. It seemed he had no interest in maintaining the pretense that this was a private conversation.

A flash of dismay ran through Alice, and she called back, "Did you just decide to transfer to her classes, too?"

"Maybe," Jacob answered unabashedly.

"Well, un-decide it! Whole hours of the future disappeared, and I need to see it!"

"Fine, but someone will need to be there to supervise you guys; it's clear that no human in that class is safe with you there."

Jasper felt his own offense mirrored in Alice, though neither of them could say that Jacob was wrong.

"I'm on it," Emmett said.

"To protect the humans, or because you're nosy?" Bella asked.

"I can have two motives. And it sounds like 'tactile male friend' will need a bodyguard." Emmett's tone was far more mirthful than the situation called for.

"I want to meet her, too," Nessie chimed in. "Especially if she's going to be a part of the family."

"Carlisle would never change a human who is completely fine and living her own life," Rosalie said pointedly, "and I'm sure Alice and Jasper wouldn't ask him to."

Jasper set his jaw to avoid giving a retort. He respected Rosalie, his pretend-twin-sister, but her staunchness was just not working in his favor right now.

"If she gets pregnant with a half-vampire, then she'll have to change," Nessie pointed out. "Oh, but Uncle Jasper can't sleep with a human..."

"Okay!" Bella said, unnecessarily loudly. The sounds of the video game stopped. "You and I are going to go catch up with your daddy."

"But _Mom_ ," Nessie groaned.

"On my back," Bella instructed. 

The sound of Nessie obeying was immediately followed by the patter of Bella's steps as they exited the house.

 _She's not wrong, though,_ Jasper thought. _I would have to be holding my breath the whole time to even have a chance..._

"You guys are really clearing out the place," Jacob observed, still with the popcorn.

"Oh." Alice winced as she returned from another vision. She lowered her voice, not that it mattered, and said, "She does not currently have an interest in immortality."

"Good for her," Rosalie said. "I might like this one."

"She also isn't looking for a relationship right now, _but_ she isn't closed to the idea, and she has always wanted siblings; that's a way in."

A part of Jasper wished that he wouldn't have to leverage his multitude of siblings in order to pique his new mate's interest, but that part was dwarfed by the tactical strategist in him, which was willing to leverage anything. "What else?"

"She likes..." Alice paused, and then frustration the taste of vinegar all but overtook her joy. "I'm serious, dog, stay out of the future! Don't talk to her, don't even talk _about_ her! I need to see everything; no blanks!"

Jasper waited for Jacob's retort, as he always had something to say about being called a dog (most commonly, something like, "I prefer the term 'natural hunter of your species, tick."), but all he heard was more popcorn being chewed. And then he tasted sharp, sour annoyance as Alice hissed:

"Cut it out! Now the whole future's gone!"

"Is it?" Jacob said coyly.

Jasper was very close to running downstairs to deal with Jacob himself, but then Carlisle's voice in the office chided, "Children, are you respecting each other's boundaries?"

"I'm not your kid, doc," Jacob reminded mildly, but he must have let up in his stymieing of Alice's visions, because relief shot through her, and her joy returned.

"She likes terms of endearment," Alice discovered. "We're going to think of as many of those as we can tonight, okay?"

Jasper nodded, gratified to have some other task to dedicate his energy to besides waiting and being in control of himself.

"She likes your real accent." Alice beamed. "So, you won't hide that anymore."

"He hides it because we're supposed to be twins," Rosalie reminded. " _I_ don't have a Southern accent."

"She won't have any questions or suspicions about that," Alice said. "Edward will inform us that she assumes you're just hiding yours. And you won't talk much in the beginning, anyway; you sulk."

"When will we meet her?" Jasper asked.

"She doesn't drive," Alice observed, pouting, "so we can't meet her in the parking lot. We can meet her in the hallway before class, but- Jacob, please decide to be somewhere else. Thank you so much. We shouldn't speak to her too soon; she has a test in the morning, and she'll be in a hurry. She's going to be dropped off at the front of the building by her mother in a blue station wagon. Her mother works at the same hospital as Carlisle; that could prove useful."

"It's somehow even creepier to be on this side of it," Jacob murmured.

"Tell me about it," Emmett muttered back, before more loudly inquiring, "Do you guys think that maybe using psychic powers to know exactly how things will play out kind of ruins everything?"

"No," Jasper answered curtly.

"Trust me, Emmett, this is still going to be pretty hard," Alice huffed.

"Is it an option for you to just avoid the girl?" Rosalie asked wearily. "She can't reciprocate a mate bond as a human, and once both of you start going crazy for her, we already know she'll be part of the family one way or another, whether she wants to or not."

"She'll want to," Alice said firmly. "That's what we're working toward. And we do have certain advantages on that front."

Jasper's talent for emotions. Alice's visions. Their siblings. Their beauty. Their wealth.

Their speed. Their strength. The fact that they wouldn't need to sleep, if it came to a chase...

"Let's go over the plan," Alice suggested, settling daintily on the edge of their bed. "We'll hunt again tomorrow morning, just to be extra safe, okay?"

Jasper nodded but couldn't bring himself to sit until Alice got back up, took his hand in both of hers, and led him to sit beside her. Still, he couldn't relax. "Tell me all the likes and dislikes you can find," he said. "And every way things might go wrong tomorrow."

Alice grinned in a way that was almost devious, and he loved it. This was one of the ways in which they were the most compatible; they both _loved_ her power and would exploit its benefits to the ends of the earth. Especially for something like this.

 _Wow_ , Jasper marveled at the acuteness of his own feelings. If he felt this strongly invested just knowing that he _would_ have another mate, how would he feel once he had seen her for himself?

...

Since her Psych midterm was in the morning, Sadie didn't take _too_ long, as she disembarked from her mother's car, to process the group of teens huddled near the entrance to the school, though she did momentarily observe, _So, those are probably the Cullens._

More accurately, three Cullens, two Hales, a Swan, and a Black would be going to school here. The two Cullen parents and the thirteen-year-old naturally would not. 

Seriously, how had she accumulated this much knowledge of the family while staying out of the gossip?

(After the Psych test, she would _have_ to do some introspection on that; regardless of which model of memory formation one subscribed to, it was generally understood that one had to be paying attention to something in order to remember it. She had evidently been listening to the gossip more than she'd admitted to herself. Fascinating.)

_Okay, now name all of Piaget's developmental stages. Sensorimotor, preoperational..._

It was a murky, drippy day to say the least, and the huddled group appeared stark pale, drawing anyone's eye, like a neon sign. _That can't be healthy,_ Sadie thought, before catching herself in a judgement. She wasn't going to judge these strangers' vitamin D intake by their complexion. In fact, she wasn't going to judge other people's vitamin intake at all. _Although I hope they do get enough sunshine,_ she thought as she opened the school's front door. She thought she heard one of them snicker, but avoided trying to listen in. She would not be nosy or rude with the new students.

It was only after she was through the doorway, as she was looking behind herself to see if there was anyone who needed her to hold the door, that she caught the eye of one of said new students; a tall boy (but not the tallest in the group) was staring at her with such unabashed intensity that it didn't _appear_ to be an accident, though she was sure that it had to be. He had to have zoned out on the spot where she happened to be standing, or maybe he was watching some insect that she couldn't see.

Mustard hair, mustard eyes, which contributed to a sort of leonine look, except for his paper-whiteness. Well-dressed and very neat, in a cashmere sweater over a collared shirt and slacks, all in shades of orange. Sadie's favorite color. One of his sisters (or possibly his girlfriend, given this family's Whole Deal) had her hand on his arm. He was handsome, but he was also staring at her, so Sadie looked away out of sheer secondhand embarrassment.

Awkward, awkward.

Off to class.

_It was his first day; he was probably nervous. No need to commit a fundamental attribution error against the poor guy._

Although, as she moved swiftly through the hallway, she did wish that she had kept looking long enough to see him _stop_ looking; not having done so, she felt irrationally as though his eyes were still on her, even now.

...

Sadie Lily Gilder was shorter than Jasper and taller than Alice. Her skin was deep brown, her eyes nearly black and positively luminous, her eyelashes long, her hair woven into many braids, shoulder-length. She wore a tie-dye patterned shirt with matching purple jeans and high tops and star-shaped earrings; comfortable and colorful, but not what Alice would call stylish. There was a glaze of hot pink lipgloss over her lips, and a dusting of flesh-colored foundation on her cheeks, and Jasper's enhanced vision could detect every pore and hair on every uncovered millimeter of her body.

She looked soft, and her heartbeat was musical, and she was perfect, and every warning Alice had given him was real, because for an entire second, Jasper was sure he wouldn't let her enter the school. He was sure that he would take both her and Alice into his arms and run as far and fast as he could. Then Alice placed a warning hand on his arm, and Edward surreptitiously grabbed the back of his sweater, and Jasper's strategic mind returned. If he tried such a thing, his family would stop him. That was what they were here for, what he had agreed to, before seeing the face of his second heart had realigned his whole way of thinking.

He remembered the warnings. _Don't kill her friends. Don't kill her dog. Don't approach her too suddenly: you might scare her, or break her, or eat her..._ He was smart enough to control himself.

Then he was looking into her eyes- _Perfect. Mine. Control yourself!_ -as he tasted her half-frazzled anticipation for her test, and her slight surprise at his gaze, and her discomfort, and...She was embarrassed for him, how cute...and her curiosity, and...

She turned away while he was still appreciating every dimension of her emotional landscape, every cut of the diamond. All of the vampire instincts he possessed told him to follow her, to not allow her to pass from his sight when she was fragile and _his_ , but as he was back on speaking terms with his wits, he got himself to hesitate for a fraction of a second.

It was Alice who immediately darted into the throng of students to follow their mate, before Jasper himself did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment! I have such fun plans for the story and the characters. Let me know which parts you've enjoyed!


	2. The Rule About Word Choice

They pursued their mate through a hallway of pointless human obstacles (which were not enough to keep them more than six feet away from her at any given time, with their innate speed and stamina, but _were_ enough to occasionally obscure parts of her from view, which was still unacceptable to Jasper) all the way up until she vanished behind the door of her first classroom.

Jasper would have continued to follow her, but then Alice was grudgingly catching at his arm, saying (in a voice that managed to calm him, albeit marginally, even at a time like this, when their mate had just passed from his immediate reach), "There will be uncomfortable questions if we go in before we get our schedules."

It took a bit more effort than he would have liked, but after a second Jasper managed to push aside the certainty that uncomfortable questions could hardly matter more than being near their mate and came to terms with the fact that entering a classroom that they should not yet know to be theirs, with only the feeble excuse that they were following a person they shouldn't know yet, would not be the best way to handle this first meeting with Sadie Lily Gilder.

He allowed Alice to reel him back in the direction of the main office, from which Jacob was already leaving (having by now retrieved his schedule; he had gone to the office straightaway, while the rest of them had waited for Sadie to arrive, because his presence there would have blocked Alice's visions). "Creepers," he greeted, saluting them sarcastically as he passed by. The emotional flavor of his mockery tended to differ from that of Emmett's mockery, which had fascinated Jasper for a while, after Jacob had joined the family. At the moment, though, the taste only annoyed him, aggravating his already impatient mood.

Alice didn't seem to be faring much better; when they entered the office and saw their siblings gathered at the desk, patiently waiting like people with nowhere to be, she raced over at what was barely an acceptable human-passing speed, and Edward had to pull Bella out of the way to avoid a collision.

"Alice Cullen," she introduced herself tersely to the perplexed woman behind the desk. "And this is Jasper Hale. May we have our schedules, please?"

Unfortunately, the interaction could not be sped through so easily. 

Despite the fact that their siblings' reactions, when the woman tried to suggest that Jasper and Alice wait their turn, were an almost comical unanimous sentiment of 'No thanks, just let them go' (as the only ones in the room to know that it was just bordering on hazardous to come between them and their mate), they still had to go through the process of confirming who they were and confirming where they lived and confirming that they did indeed want to transfer to the relevant classes. They had already filled out paperwork for the school when they'd first arrived in this town, but apparently Holderplace High School just loved to waste time or something. As he hastily scrawled out all of the usual Emergency Contact names and numbers, Jasper momentarily wished that they had chosen to start out as eighteen-year-olds, here, as that _had_ to streamline the process in some way, didn't it?

(But no, being eighteen would complicate too many things. Better this way.)

And despite having finished filling out all of their forms before the others were past the name and address section, still they were expected to wait in the office until the bell signaled the end of first period, to avoid interrupting the midterm.

Jasper found himself remembering how utterly _exquisite_ human blood tasted in comparison to animal blood, as he glared daggers at the oblivious receptionists for the subsequent hour.

Alice, who was sitting in his lap (despite a disapproving noise made by the woman who had handed them their schedules), passed the time with her eyes shut, doubtless combing through all the potential futures. (Jasper sat perfectly still, to avoid jostling or distracting her, to the point that Edward had to near-silently remind him to move his shoulders as though he was breathing.) She looked as though she was meditating, to human eyes.

Then, exactly three seconds before the bell rang, she gasped, opened her eyes, and whispered, "No! What is he doing?"

"Who?" Jasper asked.

The bell rang.

Alice leaped from his lap, caught his hand in the same swift motion, and dashed from the room with him willingly in tow.

...

Sadie finished her test early, spent the remaining class time flipping idly and silently through a hardcover DSM-5 from her teacher's bookshelf, and all but floated out of the room when the bell rang. Midterms were over; she was unburdened, a leaf on the wind...

She bumped into someone. Which wouldn't have been of note, as it was a crowded hallway, but the guy was _facing_ her.

Also, he was huge.

 _Too strong a word._ He was tall, and muscular.

"Sorry," he said, with a jovial smile.

"Oh, no, I was the at-fault party; you were stationary," Sadie said, before it occurred to her that his being stationary in the middle of a crowded hallway might reasonably be called the inciting incident after all.

"Could you walk with me?" he asked. "I'm trying to get to French class, and I have no idea which way..."

"Oh, sure," Sadie said, beginning to lead the way in a new direction. "The language classes are mostly upstairs on the right; what's the room number?"

He told her, and they set off together. He had a comfortable presence, though his unfamiliarity with the layout of the school, plus the fact that Sadie was sure she would remember if she had ever seen him before in her life, told her that he was new here. He hadn't been standing with the Cullens before, but it was possible he was one of them; she hadn't actually done a head count to see if it had been six people or seven.

Suddenly, the guy glanced back over his shoulder, as though noticing something behind them, placed his hand on Sadie's back (respectfully high, just between her shoulder blades), and ushered her forward at a much higher speed, increasing his own pace and urgency in the process.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Most likely earning a fight I don't know that I'll win. But hey, a day in the life. I'm Jacob, by the way. Jacob Black."

The Cullen whose original family name was Black, then. "I'm Sadie; nice to meet you; welcome to Holderplace High. What's actually going on, though?"

"Nothing in the immediate. Long term, kind of a lot, but I can't explain all that."

"I'm very confused."

"And that's okay. I didn't really plan to do _any_ of this. I've kinda gotten into the habit of doing things on a whim, the past couple of years, and hoping they work out. I've gotten good at it."

She was itching to ask what had brought him to such a practice, but she was pretty sure that psychoanalyzing someone so soon on the heels of learning their name was a no-no. Besides, there were more pertinent questions. "Are we still going to your French class?"

"Yes. Do I turn here, or keep straight?"

"Turn."

They did. Sadie tried to get a peek at whatever Jacob had seen behind him, but Jacob's body obstructed her view. "Here's an idea," Jacob said, as though he really was winging this whole conversation as he'd said he was. "A sort of thought experiment, for you: try to commit to as few things as possible for the next few days. Consider every decision, change your mind suddenly, just really keep your plans moving."

"That...sounds interesting," Sadie agreed, noting that the idea sounded pretty similar to what Jacob had said _he_ usually did, and also that it was a little odd for a stranger to be handing her a thought experiment unsolicited, "but...why?"

"Just give it a shot," Jacob said. "Trust me, it might be important."

They reached his French classroom, and he smiled companionably.

"Sorry for that weirdness. Think about what I said. I'll be seeing you around."

"Sure thing, yeah," Sadie agreed, trying not to feel like the not-in-the-know character in a fantasy novel. "Nice meeting you."

Jacob left her to go to class. His demeanor was calm enough, but the way he had looked over his shoulder made her feel oddly paranoid, so Sadie did not keep still for long; she sped through the hallway to get to US History. She tried out Jacob's "thought experiment" a bit on the way. How would that even work, when her end goal was getting to class? And what was even the dependent variable of this experiment? What was expected to change? Regardless, she went out of her way to consider taking one path to class, then abruptly change her mind and turn an unnecessary corner, ultimately rerouting herself twice and keeping up an ongoing internal debate about whether or not to stop at the vending machine first, before she finally let herself arrive at her destination.

There were three more members of the Cullen family in her history class: the leonine one who had stared at her earlier this morning (For the sake of not judging, she made the decision not to be bothered by that.), and the tiny girl... _Strong word_...the small-in-stature girl with the dark, spiky hair who had been holding his arm earlier, and a broad one who managed to be even more muscular than Jacob, though possibly not as tall. Seeing them again, and their startling paleness that apparently did not require the contrast of a murky sky to be noticeable, it occurred to Sadie how much Jacob seemed to stand out among the family. She hoped that he didn't feel alienated from the rest; she had yet to see him with any of his siblings. She hoped they all got along.

The three Cullens who _were_ present were gathered near the front of the room, when she entered. The broad one seemed to be lightheartedly introducing himself and his siblings to the teacher, while the other two stood nearby, quietly talking amongst themselves. The two were matching in their orange clothing; him in the sweater and collared shirt that Sadie had already noticed, and her in a dress and cardigan and ballerina flats, all in soft sunset colors. _Very pleasant to the eye. And very cute of them to coordinate like that._ When Sadie took one more step into the room, they both suddenly looked at her at the same time.

The leonine one stared at her just as raptly as before. The spiky-haired girl stared, too, at first wide-eyed and appearing quite upset about something, but then that look was gone in an instant and replaced with an excited smile.

Sadie reflexively looked behind her, to see if another Cullen was coming and that was why these two were reacting as though someone of importance to them was walking in. But there was no one. _Do I look like someone they know?_ she wondered. The only other explanation she could come up with was that maybe they were thinking something similar to an out-of-context line from the 1999 Brendan Fraser movie _Blast from the Past_ : 'Oh, my lucky stars- a negro!' Which succeeded in making her laugh internally, because Brendan Fraser's delivery was funny and she was amused with herself for procuring such a specific reference out of nowhere to a movie she hadn't thought of in years, but it was unlikely to be the actual reason for these two Cullens' odd behavior.

She didn't have much longer to wonder; as Sadie was preparing to go to her seat, the Cullen girl skittered over to her, still with that huge smile on her face and the leonine boy following closely in her wake. 

"Hello," the girl greeted brightly. Her voice was...uncommonly musical. "I'm Alice, and this is Jasper. We're new here." Still no context clues on the sister-or-girlfriend question, but it wasn't like it was any of Sadie's business, anyway. (Alice's eyes were just like Jasper's, though she shared no other features with him. The broad Cullen boy who was still chatting up the teacher also had those same eyes. That could mean that these three were the ones who had been born with the surname "Cullen", but Sadie was pretty sure that her casual glance at the others on her way into school this morning had revealed more gold eyes in the bunch, if not _only_ gold eyes. Such odd things this family had in common, excepting Jacob. Most of them wouldn't be related to one another biologically, and yet they were all pale with honeyish eyes. Except Jacob.)

"I'm...Sadie." She honestly expected them to both deflate, in disappointed realization that she wasn't the person they had thought her to be, but the expressions on their faces did not change. Correction: Jasper's mouth curved into a slight smile. "Welcome to Holderplace."

"Sadie. That is a _beautiful_ name," Alice said earnestly. She grabbed both of Sadie's hands in her own, and the latter was startled by how cold the other girl's skin was. She was actually doubtful that 'freezing cold' would be a hyperbolic word choice. Did she need a thicker sweater? Some gloves? "I can just tell we're going to be _great_ friends. I have a real sense for this kind of thing, and you seem _wonderful."_

Sadie's defenses dropped almost all at once. The amount of genuineness in Alice's eyes was so atypical to high school, where jadedness and mockery were the prevailing defense mechanisms. There were lots of nice people, but not very many people with their hearts so clearly pinned to their sleeves. Alice's investment in being Sadie's friend seemed so real that her and Jasper's peculiar staring suddenly seemed to make sense. They were new here, and a bit awkward, and that was fine.

"Thank you," Sadie replied, smiling in what she hoped was an encouraging way. She made sure to address both Alice and Jasper as she said, "I hope we _can_ be friends." She began to slip her hands out of Alice's, and there was a strange moment when Alice's grip tightened, before she seemed to catch herself and let go.

Deceptively strong grip; Sadie tried not to let on that her hands were throbbing, as she returned them to her sides.

"Say...I noticed you talking to our brother in the hallway. Jacob. What were you guys talking about?" Despite Alice's glowing smile, there was an odd weight to the question that made Sadie a bit nervous that she was being pulled into a family dispute.

Well, Jacob hadn't given her any indication that their conversation was a secret, and Sadie was not a casual liar, as per her Rules.

"He asked me to show him how to get to his French class, said he had taken to doing things on a whim, and suggested I try complicating my decision-making process. Not much else. It was a pretty enigmatic conversation, but he seemed very nice."

Alice's eyes appeared wider than they had been before, though it was hard to tell. "He _is_ nice, isn't he?" she said, a bit flatly. Jasper's brow had definitely furrowed, the trace of a smile gone.

Sadie flashed another smile, this time in discomfort, and excused herself to her seat. She sat near the front, next to Colin (who was the only member of her study group to take this class) while the new students were relegated to the few empty desks in the back. Not that they seemed to mind; the broad one (Who smiled at her, in greeting, on the way to his seat; nice of him.) went immediately to texting under his desk, once he had sat down, and Jasper stared at the clock as intensely as though he was hoping to manifest some Matilda-esque telekinetic powers, and Alice asked for a pass to the restroom barely a minute after the teacher had started talking.

Sadie allowed her attention to leave the new students, as class wore on. She focused on taking notes, and on replying to Colin's periodic whispers about how she thought the Psych midterm had gone.

(Her note-taking ended up more sporadic than usual; she only wrote down key words, because her hands were still aching where Alice had gripped them.)

...

Alice didn't have to say anything to get Jacob's attention (Which was splendid, because given her current rage, anything she said to call him over to her would have been rude enough that he would have ignored her out of spite.); she only had to loiter in the hallway outside his classroom and trust his nose.

Sure enough, after only about ten more seconds, she heard him ask to be excused to the restroom.

(Amusingly, his teacher replied that, while she would not bother him about it on his first day, she expected all such requests to be posed to her "en français, s'il vous plait".)

Shortly, Jacob swaggered out, twice Alice's height and a sixth of her age and worlds more indifferent to her visible fury than he should have been. "Hello," he said flatly, walking past her in the direction of the vending machines and pulling a crisp dollar bill out of his pocket.

"What have you done?" she hissed at him. "I told you to stay away, and now you've single-handedly made the future so turbulent that I have a migraine."

Jacob slid his dollar into the vending machine and punched in the code for a bag of chips. "Sorry to hear that," he said, still too calm, "but it's for the best, you know."

"For the best?!" Keeping her exclamation at a whispered level required all of her self-control. "What if, thanks to your meddling, I miss a future where somebody dies? Or-"

"Can I see your phone?"

"Why?"

"So I can call BS." He had the nerve to grin at his own joke, and a part of Alice acknowledged that she might have laughed under normal circumstances, but as it stood she could only say:

" _Excuse me?_ "

Jacob put another dollar into the machine. How many snacks was he getting? "That isn't the main way you were using your visions, and you know it. You were using them to find out what Sadie would say under what circumstances, so that you could charm her instead of being honest with her, and to see how you could best sneak into her room at night." Another dollar, another code punched in, and the quiet crash of his third bag of chips landing atop the other two, in the machine's bottom. "It was a huge invasion of privacy, and it wasn't fair to her."

"And suddenly you're all about being fair? Suddenly you care about wooing people within the boundaries of politeness?"

"I don't have to be a saint to know that you guys were going down a weird road." He grabbed all three bags out of the machine. "Edward agrees with me."

"He what?"

Alice's cell phone buzzed, and when she pulled it from her cardigan's pocket, there was a text lighting up the screen.

 **Edward:** _It's true._

"Emmett and Rosalie, too," Jacob carried on, opening his first bag and shoving several chips into his mouth at once. That werewolf appetite. "Carlisle, Esme, and Nessie are on your side, and Bella really wants to stay out of it."

Alice made a mental note to tell Jasper who their allies were, in this; he loved resource management. "I think Edward, Emmett, and Rosalie know better than anyone that it's unwise to come between vampires and their mate." Even now, after less than ten minutes, being away from both Jasper and Sadie was excruciating. Emmett was spending the whole class period away from Rosalie, because there had only been three available seats, and the two of them had acted as though one of them was going away to war.

 **Edward:** _No one is coming between you. We just want to help you to remember to use restraint. We know that it's difficult._

"Edward, I supported you when you wanted someone to check Bella's future constantly; I supported you when you needed someone to keep her out of La Push when you were away; I was there for you every time you flopped dejectedly around the house, or when you ran away entirely; I sat around the house half-mad for Bella's _entire_ pregnancy. _You_ got to climb into your mate's bedroom every night until you were married, and if you think that _we_ won't-"

"But you won't, though, right?" Jacob cut in. He was already finishing the second bag of chips. Honestly. "There's still the dog."

"We've planned for the dog," Alice said dismissively.

"When did you do that?"

"Last night. Oh, that's right; I forgot that you sleep. At any rate..." Alice glanced around to be sure that there were no humans nearby and no cameras pointed in her direction, then she zipped up close to Jacob, more quickly than a human could even have processed. She was accustomed to his smell, and he _had_ to be accustomed to hers, but still his nose wrinkled. "Stay out of our way, all of you. I'm serious."

Jacob shrugged, dumped all of his third bag of chips into his mouth, and merely said, "Family meeting later. And don't forget to pretend to eat lunch, since I won't be there to make you freaks look normal."

He turned to walk away, and Alice gladly let him (even a bit grateful that he was honoring his commitment to eat lunch somewhere other than the cafeteria, for the sake of keeping her visions clear)...until a glance ahead at lunchtime revealed to her an incoming problem. "Wait," she said reluctantly. "If you're not there, Sadie will worry we're excluding you."

"You are," Jacob said, grinning once more.

Alice took a completely unnecessary (and not even pleasant) deep breath, to assuage her annoyance that Jacob had _introduced_ himself to Sadie, now, which was the only reason Sadie was even in a position to think anything of his absence. "Please have lunch with us, so she doesn't think we're discriminating against you."

He looked as though he was about to give her a hard time, but then _his_ phone buzzed, presumably with an Edward text of his own. He smirked, murmured "Bossy leech," and at last relented, "Fine, I'll sit with you guys."

She couldn't do anything as graceful as thanking him for the concession, because she had just caught sight of the time: it was 11:03, and she knew that 11:04 was when Tactile Male Friend would put his arm around their Sadie.

Jasper.

She broke into a run, noticeably fast for a human but also not at her top speed, which would have to be enough for now, especially considering that Jasper splattering some invasive human boy across the classroom walls and floor would be rather more of a spectacle than her running kind of fast.

Well, it was unlikely that he could kill the boy, with Emmett there to grab him, but it _was_ likely that he would try, which was still not good.

She crossed the building, flung the classroom door open (ignoring the momentarily startled reaction of the teacher and the class), and hastened to her seat, whereupon she immediately wound her arm through Jasper's. He leaned in to her, gravitationally pulled as always, though his eyes had only briefly flicked away from the clock (from which he watched Sadie's reflection) to observe her return.

"Close your eyes now," she said, too softly for human ears.

Jasper complied, and Alice experienced a moment of pride that she was probably the only one who could get him to stop looking at Sadie just by asking. Then she saw the predicted event in person, as a lanky boy with uncombed hair draped his arm across Sadie's back, his hand on her shoulder as he leaned in to whisper some comment to her (Alice could hear him, but his words were unimportant.), and he was teenage human boy, half-washed, sweating in random places, touching Sadie, _touching_ her, and breathing on her, as thought that was something he was just allowed to do...

Emmett cleared his throat, on Alice's other side, and whispered, "You okay there, sis?"

She was not okay. This was a worse rage than she had felt watching Jacob pilot Sadie away from them down the hallway, because at least Jacob _knew_ that Sadie was theirs, and at least Jacob was part of the family.

Alice closed her eyes and made a point of showing herself a future where she hurt Sadie's friend. It was a bad future. They would have to kill the other humans in the room and move towns immediately, to be safe from the Volturi, and they would have to kidnap Sadie (if they didn't eat her by accident; Jasper would not forgive himself for that, if he did), and Sadie would hate them, and fear them. A bad future.

Then she checked the friend's future, just to further motivate herself not to kill him. His name was Colin. He was going to get chocolate milk with his lunch today. He took art as an elective, and he was quite decent at it. At home, he had two sisters and a single mother. _You don't want to kill Colin. You just want him to stop touching her._

She opened her eyes. Colin's arm was back where it belonged. Jasper sensed her relief and opened his eyes, as well, and resumed watching Sadie's reflection in the glass over the clock face.

That had been the major hurdle of this class time, and they were past it. They hadn't killed Colin today.

It was fine, now. Things were fine. Lunch was the next challenge, especially since she couldn't _see_ it, now that Jacob had to be involved. She would have to convince him to take a few bathroom breaks, to give her some clarity.

Alice joined Jasper in watching Sadie's reflection until class ended. Lovely face, lovely hair, lovely body. She ought to be wearing something as lovely as she was; oh, the finery Alice wanted to drape her in. White fabrics and pastels would be lovely on her. Oh, and red! And some real jewelry. Maybe the occasional tiara. No, screw it; a tiara for every day of the week. For every day of the year!

This was going to be tricky. So tricky. Sadie wasn't like Bella; she wouldn't be particularly invested in figuring out their secrets, unless they _handed_ her a mystery. She tried to mind her own business; it was so sweet, even if it was inconvenient for them. Alice's choice to identify herself and Jasper as friends had sped things up a little; Sadie would be less stodgy about respecting their boundaries, now. Especially if they kept inviting her into their lives.

It occurred to Alice: _Why wait for Sadie to find out, anyway?_ It was illegal to let humans in on the secret, but they intended to change her eventually. And it wasn't like the Volturi were going to kill them over a teeny tiny secrecy violation; worst case scenario, she would have to join them and they would then gladly overlook everything she'd ever done. It wasn't optimal, but at the moment it sure seemed worth having Jasper and Sadie both by her side as quickly as possible.

Alice scanned through a few futures in which she told Sadie that they were vampires and that she was their mate at various parts of this school day. Though she couldn't check lunch, it still quickly became clear that any outlandish statements would have to be accompanied by proof, which could not be given here.

Maybe they could follow her, in secret, the next time she went out alone, and then Alice could bite her, quickly-

No, she didn't know that she would have the control for that. Could Carlisle be convinced? Edward apparently wasn't an ally...

Oh! A syringe. She could fill a syringe with her venom; that would be easier. Carlisle probably had some around the house somewhere...Yes, just find a syringe, fill it with venom (hers or Jasper's), catch Sadie out on her own...

 _And then spend three days listening to her scream and inform her that she was made for us once she's a freaked-out newborn._ Well, Jasper's expertise in handling newborns, plus his mood control, should be of help by that point.

No. Still no. She remembered all of the futures she had seen; there were some fun experiences to be had while Sadie was still human. It was _harder_ to see those kinds of things now, but they were there, regardless. And she couldn't even _see_ Sadie as a vampire, possibly because Jacob would be somehow involved in that future.

She looked over at Sadie- actual Sadie, not her reflection -and found herself admiring the human things: the little fidgets, all that blinking, the exact tone of her skin. She had been so warm to the touch, when Alice had grabbed her hands. So soft... _fragile_...soft. It would be so fun to watch her eat human food.

It would also be very fun to watch her drain the blood from the local wildlife.

Watching her sleep! That would be tonight. That would be wonderful. There would be fewer boundaries, then. They wouldn't have to act so casual, once she was unconscious.

 _It's so convenient that humans sleep._ Alice decided that that was her new favorite thing: the fact that humans slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment again, lol! Loved your comments on the first chapter; I love reading what you guys liked.


	3. The Rule About Deception

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I hope this came out good, or at least entertaining.

Seemingly the exact moment the bell sounded, Alice was right next to Sadie, eagerly suggesting, "Eat lunch with us!"

"You move fast," Sadie observed lightly. She was fairly certain that Alice had crossed the room in less than two seconds, and now she was excitedly (but more gently than before) gripping Sadie's wrist and forearm. Her skin was still so cold. Maybe it was a circulation thing.

"Really?" Alice seemed delighted by the purely factual compliment. "No one's ever told me that before."

"Really, no one?"

"Well, I guess I don't know; I have no memories before 1920."

Sadie chuckled, pleasantly surprised by the weirdness of the joke. "What a coincidence: Neither do I."

Alice grinned. She had a sort of pixie-ish look, or elfish, especially when she smiled. Which seemed to be always. Sadie felt- as Jasper, too, drew near -a strange and surely premature rush of affection and warmth for her new friends. Alice glanced backward at Jasper, and her smile turned into a smirk.

The other Cullen, the broad one, approached too. "Emmett Cullen," he introduced himself, with a pleasant smile. He reached out to shake Sadie's hand, and she accepted. His hand was freezing, too. "Nice to meet you. Sorry about these two; they're pretty much just gonna _be_ like this, always."

"Emmett," Alice hissed, and Jasper shot him a slightly annoyed look, as well. (Sadie wondered why Jasper didn't ever seem to talk.)

"Since I know they didn't clarify anything," Emmett continued, with a cheerful and slightly pacifying look at Alice, "Alice is a Cullen, and Jasper is a Hale, like my girlfriend Rosalie. You already met Jacob; his last name is Black. As a unit, it's fine to call us 'the Cullens', though; we know it's a lot of surnames to manage. Jake'll probably make a face about it if he hears you call him a Cullen, but that's normal. You'll meet everyone else at lunch."

"I...can't wait," Sadie said. It _would_ be nice to meet the whole family, especially if she could expect as wide a range of personalities as it seemed she could, but it was peculiar to be invited to do so immediately after meeting and kind-of-sort-of befriending Alice and Jasper. Wouldn't it? This was abnormal, right? She was starting to feel a bit like an acquisition, and Colin's cult theory came to mind, unbidden. She remembered reading that one step in indoctrination that cults used was giving the target lots of singular attention and praise. _That's also a first step in friendship,_ Sadie reminded herself, putting a pin in these paranoid thoughts to hopefully later delve into why she was having them. She wasn't normally so suspicious of people. Had her friends' Cullen conspiracy theories perhaps made her more receptive to wary thoughts that she would otherwise ignore?

That was actually an extremely likely answer. But she would think more on it later. Maybe during art class, as it would be easier to think impartially when she wasn't surrounded by the subjects of her ruminations, and she couldn't imagine there would be Cullens in more than one of her classes.

Anyway. New friends!

Alice did not relinquish Sadie's arm once as they progressed through the hallway. She was actually lowering Sadie's body temperature a not-insignificant amount, but Sadie didn't bring it up. Jasper followed close to them the whole time, though Emmett got left behind at some point, or else wandered off.

"I simply adore the way those colors look on you, by the way," Alice said, her high, melodic voice particularly well-suited to old fashioned phrases like 'simply adore'. Sadie felt another rush of affection and couldn't explain it if she tried. "What made you choose tie-dye?"

Sadie giggled a bit at the way Alice was clearly trying not to betray how little she thought of tie-dye as a fashion choice. "It was at the store and it looked comfortable?"

"Comfortable," Alice repeated, as though committing the word to memory. More affection pulsed through her. Why did it seem her brain was releasing dopamine or...oxytocin, every time Alice spoke?

There was a brief silence, during which they arrived in the cafeteria and entered the lunch line.

"So, who do you normally eat lunch with?" Alice asked. "That Colin kid?"

"You know Colin?" Sadie noted, vaguely surprised.

Alice blinked, as though she'd been caught in some small misdoing, before calmly replying, "No. Mr. Bayes said his name during class."

"Oh." Sadie couldn't remember whether or not that was true. "Well, no, I don't really eat lunch with him. Usually, I just go to my next class and spend lunchtime there; Ms. Lee doesn't mind, and it cuts down on the hallway commute and...exposure to the cafeteria." She hoped the last part didn't sound snobbish or negative, but she really did not enjoy the noise or mess of the lunch room.

Alice tilted her head. "So you didn't plan to buy a lunch?"

"I packed a sandwich and some celery. But I don't mind waiting in line if you guys need-"

"Nonsense; _we'll_ buy you lunch." The smaller girl was actually beaming, as if she would like nothing more than to buy Sadie food. "You like pizza, right?"

"I...do, but..."

"Great!" Alice turned and chirped out Sadie's lunch order, and hers and Jasper's, to the cafeteria worker on the other side of the counter.

"Alice, you really don't have to..." Sadie tried to say that she really didn't need anyone to pay for her lunch, but it only caused Alice's bright expression to morph into an utterly tragic one.

"Please let us treat you?" she said. "We don't usually make friends on the first day." She had chosen exactly the right words to make Sadie give in. Her dazzling smile sprang back into place when Sadie acquiesced to being spoiled.

 _Careful, or you might reinforce an idea that human relationships are purely transactional_ , Sadie warned herself belatedly. _I could see rich kids with an awkward social presence coming to that conclusion._ Then she corrected herself, _That is a judgement and an assumption._ She would cross that bridge _if_ she came to it.

Jasper paid for all three lunches ("He holds our money," Alice explained, with a doting look.), and Sadie was led to a lunch table in an isolated corner, that was already occupied by the five remaining Cullens. None of the others, it seemed, had invited friends to eat with them. Emmett had his arm around a lovely blond girl who must have been Rosalie, Jacob was face-deep in five pizza slices (but surfaced to wave hello to Sadie), and a boy with hair like tousled copper wires was speaking with a girl with dark brown hair, their faces bent intimately close together. Everyone except Jacob uncommonly pale, everyone except Jacob golden-eyed, everyone except Jacob sitting in front of an empty tray. (Presumably they had all given him their pizza.)

"You've met Jacob and Emmett," Alice said, her voice oddly brisk despite her chipper smile. "That's Rosalie, and Edward and Bella."

Edward and Bella separated and flashed reasonably friendly, if aloof, smiles at Sadie. "It's great to meet you, Sadie," Bella said.

She had an odd sort of presence. The only word Sadie could think of to describe it was "self-important", but that had too negative a connotation for what she meant by it. Essentially, the way Bella spoke gave the impression that she was entirely convinced that her words mattered to everyone present. Like she was giving the world's most relaxed courtroom verdict. And yet her expression was so even and mask-like that it was near-impossible to tell if she meant what she said. On the whole, she managed to have an extremely potent neutral energy, and while Sadie didn't know what to make of it, she respected that.

"Charmed," Rosalie agreed in a silky voice. _She_ was not as enigmatic; she was confident in a more straightforwardly proud way than Bella was, and it was clear from the way that her eyes were slightly narrowed that she was discerning what to make of Sadie. Reasonable enough, and also respectable.

All observations, not judgements. She had no firmly-held beliefs about any of them yet.

"It's nice to meet you, too," Sadie said. "And...hello again, Jacob. Emmett." It was weird to be this formal in greeting everyone, but that seemed to be what they expected her to do, if they had her standing in front of them like she was a candidate for something.

"Bella, scoot over to make room," Edward suggested, moving over a bit himself.

Bella moved closer (somehow) to Edward, and Jacob scooted into the additional space cleared by Bella, and Emmett moved into the space left by Jacob, and then Rosalie cleared the space at the end of the semicircle. Alice slid into place beside Rosalie, and Jasper gestured for Sadie to precede him to sit.

Sadie did (a part of her observing how cold the seat beneath her was, despite having been occupied by Rosalie just a moment ago), and Jasper sat down after her, so that she was between him and Alice, and he took the end of the semicircle opposite Edward.

In the current arrangement, Sadie was very much in the corner, but for once the corner of the cafeteria _didn't_ appear to be full of flies. She wondered if the Cullens had sprayed something. Normally she would have been uncomfortable, in an isolated table full of strangers, but she felt peculiarly serene.

"So." Emmett cleared his throat. "Got a car?"

Rosalie exhaled a laugh, at the abruptness of the question.

"No," Sadie replied, cracking a smile. Emmett and Jacob were so far the least stilted of the bunch. Neither was as spritely as Alice, but she valued their casual vibes. "I was planning on looking at some this weekend, actually. I do have my license."

"I noticed the car magazine in your backpack."

Sadie turned to check, though she wasn't sure why she felt the need to ascertain that her backpack was, in fact, unzipped. "Yeah, my parents gave it to me."

Alice gasped almost theatrically, her eyes dancing with light. "We have so many old cars that we don't use! You should come over to check out our garage, see if anything strikes your fancy."

"I'll have to ask my parents, but that sounds nice. Thanks for the offer."

Alice simpered at the words of gratitude; there was no other word for it but "simper". Sadie was hit with that strange rush of affection again.

Edward cleared his throat, and Sadie, by reflex, gave him her attention, but he appeared to only be making eye contact with Jasper (and fairly sharp eye contact, as well), so she returned to minding her own business.

"Are you close with your parents?" Rosalie inquired. A kind of invasive thing to ask a stranger, but Sadie supposed she _had_ mentioned her parents twice in the span of ten seconds, so fair enough.

"Yeah," Sadie answered. "We're not _best friends_ , but they're good parents."

"Any siblings or other close relatives?" Rosalie followed up, and now it was Emmett's turn to laugh.

"No siblings. My cousins are nice, I guess; I don't see them often. And I have a dog; his name is Brillig."

"Like from Jabberwocky?" Bella asked swiftly.

" _Yes_ ," Sadie said, her voice pitched a little higher with appreciation, that someone had gotten the reference.

Bella made eye contact with Alice and seemed to wince, as though guilty; Sadie wasn't sure what to make of the expression (the first identifiable emotion she had seen on Bella, fleeting though it was), as Alice was still smiling when she turned to look at her, so she merely ignored it altogether and said:

"I really like Lewis Carroll."

Bella glanced at Alice again before reservedly replying, "I've always found his works a bit...silly."

"They are," Sadie agreed lightly, "but I find silly things comforting, sometimes. And things that rhyme; I used to recite Jabberwocky to myself whenever I was nervous about something."

"Things that rhyme," Alice murmured, the same way she had said "comfortable" earlier; as though committing the words to memory. Perhaps she was compiling some sort of a list.

Sadie reached for her pizza slice. Her hand brushed against Jasper's, and her heart fluttered, not in a romantic way, but in a manner characterized by primal dread. Jasper's hand was as cold as Alice's: ice cold. Why did so few people at this table seem to produce body heat? So far, just herself and Jacob- Emmett and Alice and, from the feel of the seat, Rosalie, and now Jasper as well, were all icy. The dread, which she hadn't yet adequately thought through (She understood the superficial cause, the unsettling stimulus, but not why it had caused such a perturbed reaction.), was just as quickly smothered by a wave of calm, which was equally confusing. She wasn't given enough time to reconcile with either feeling before there was another stimulus to consider- a pensive whisper:

"You're so soft and warm."

It was the first thing Sadie had ever heard Jasper say. His voice was deeper and gentler than she'd expected, with some sort of accent that she couldn't well identify from so few words. Also, that might have been the weirdest thing anyone had ever said to her, or at least the weirdest _first_ thing anyone had ever said to her.

It didn't seem the words were really meant _for_ her, though; it wasn't that Jasper had blurted them out, exactly, but rather as though he had been musing aloud and not expected her to hear him. Though it seemed the whole table had heard him, given how Jacob and Emmett both snorted at the same time and Rosalie sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. Edward looked resigned, if anything, and Bella's poker face was still in place.

Alice's smile likewise had not changed or faded. It actually impressive how none of her muscles ever seemed to twitch or tire. Surely it had to hurt to maintain such a bright smile for such a long time? _Well,_ Sadie reasoned, _if she smiles this much on a daily basis, which I can only assume she does, it stands to reason that the muscles would get stronger, doesn't it?_ Maybe. Now Sadie wondered if she should try smiling for longer times; that was an endurance skill worth developing, wasn't it? She had already, over the course of her life, been intermittently practicing keeping a blank expression (in case of an encounter with Koh the Face Stealer from _Avatar_ ), staring without blinking (in case of an encounter with the Weeping Angels from _Doctor Who_ ), and holding her breath (useful for a number of real life reasons). Sustained smiling was just another thing to add to the list. No practical use that she could think of, but not everything had to be practical.

"Thanks," Sadie replied to Jasper. No reason not to take the compliment at eye level; he hadn't taken on any other traits of a movie serial killer yet.

"'It puts the lotion in the basket'," Jacob snickered, apparently on a similar train of thought.

"What?" Alice said.

"It's from a movie," Edward explained.

"Come on, everyone's seen _Silence of the Lambs_ ," Jacob complained. "I saw it when I was, like, eight. Back me up, Sade."

"Well, I-" She certainly hadn't been allowed to see it when she was _eight_ , and due to her parents' comparatively stodgy understanding of what should be allowed at any given age, she _still_ wasn't allowed to see it unless an adult was with her (at least for the few months until she turned seventeen). She wouldn't have been interested in the first place, had she not heard enough references and quotes that she deemed it worth investigating. So she'd read the Wikipedia page and the TV Tropes page. Still hadn't seen the movie itself. "I've seen _some_ of it," she said. Technically true; she'd seen clips of the film in a YouTube video essay about writing good villains.

"'Sade'?" Alice repeated, her smile falling away in favor of an annoyed look. "Must you nickname everyone?"

" _Bad_ nicknames, too," Bella added. "That one sounds like 'Marquis de Sade'."

"Not how you pronounce that," Alice mumbled.

"Bring it up at the family meeting, if it bothers you," Jacob said with a shrug. His five slices of pizza were gone already, and Sadie was only just starting on her one.

 _Gotta up my game_ , she thought. Just as she had taken a mouthful of food, though, Emmett was pointing at her and saying:

"Okay. Favorite fantasy creature: Go!"

"Emmett," both Edward, Bella, and Alice all groaned at the same time.

"Just an icebreaker," Emmett said innocently, and Jacob chuckled.

Sadie swallowed her food. "Faeries," she said decisively. "With an F-A-E, not an F-A-I."

Emmett nodded sagely. "Explain your reasoning."

"I like how they can't lie."

"You don't like liars?" Rosalie asked, raising her eyebrows.

"Well, sometimes there are reasons to lie, so I won't unilaterally condemn it, but if you're smart enough for ironically truthful wordplay, then it seems to me like flat-out lying is just lazy."

The Cullens all seemed amused by her answer, more so than she had really intended; even Jasper let out a breathy chuckle and fondly murmured, "I'll keep that in mind."

...

Jasper had taken one breath at the beginning of the day, and he had spent it all by talking twice at lunch.

It was a shame, because it was terribly interesting to listen to Sadie talk, and he wanted to ask her every question he hadn't thought to ask Alice last night or this morning. It was really fortunate that his siblings were taking it on themselves to interrogate her, too.

"How do you feel about lies of omission?" Bella asked.

"I don't think it's even fair to call those lies," Sadie opined. "People don't owe me every piece of the truth."

Jasper adored her, and he was also so terribly amused by the dramatic irony at play. Maybe they didn't owe her every piece of the truth, but he had to believe that she would prefer to know that she was surrounded by vampires and one werewolf. Though, based on the taste he had gotten of her reflexive terror when she'd felt his hand, that would probably only make her afraid. The reaction to their temperature had been culminating since Alice had first touched her, so a buildup was only to be expected, but that did not make the experience any more pleasant. He did not like her fear. That vinegar taste, the minute recoil of her dark hand. He hated it enough that Edward hadn't even critiqued him when he'd pushed calmness onto her, instead. Most likely, Edward had deemed Jasper's dislike for her fear imminently dangerous enough that it took precedence over his own moral quandary about the underhandedness of altering Sadie's emotions. Good; Edward's moral quandaries were not of use.

"Interesting way of looking at it," Rosalie said, with an expression of distaste that did not match her feelings of intrigue. "I would disagree. Anyone who's chosen to talk to me should offer me the respect of doing so with utter transparency."

"Would you say that _you're_ subject to those same standards?" Sadie asked, not in a challenging way; her intrigue seemed to mirror Rosalie's.

Rose's expression was still for only a second before she flatly said, "No. Just them."

Sadie laughed. Her laugh was incredible, her amusement simply scrumptious...Immediately, Jasper found himself feeding it, sending her more waves of euphoria...

Edward whispered Jasper's name, just beneath the register of human hearing, and Jasper hissed at the interruption. (And _that_ was the last of his air.) Edward didn't understand; he could only experience thoughts; he couldn't taste the unique flavors of emotion, and he certainly couldn't participate in them the way Jasper could.

Even more than that, Edward didn't appreciate Sadie the way Jasper did- as well he shouldn't, for she was _his_ Sadie, _their_ Sadie, and she belonged entirely to him and Alice.

Fortunately, though audible to the human ear (especially the human ear immediately nearby), Jasper's hiss did not disrupt the ongoing conversation, so Sadie did not take special notice of it even as it caused her heart to skip a beat in momentary panic. Alice was right; her determination to mind her own business and maintain a polite comportment really gave them a lot of leeway as far as their more ostentatious vampiric traits were concerned.

Also she was lovely and soft and warm and he just wanted to pick her up and hold her to his chest and...

At any rate, the discussion had migrated to the topic of school dances, as Alice had been planning for it to. (Emmett and Jacob kept the interrogation going by every now and then interjecting ridiculous questions at random.) "There's still ring dance," Sadie was saying. "Juniors don't go to prom. It's a shame you guys missed homecoming."

"Ring dance," Alice echoed. "When is that?" As planned.

"Next month." As they knew.

"So soon! Have you bought a dress yet? We should go shopping together!"

They happened to know that she had _not_ yet bought a dress, and there would ostensibly have been no harm in letting her say so, but Alice had been adamant that not allowing her to answer those kinds of questions would benefit them in the long run. Especially since, between Alice and Edward, they would never not know her answer to anything.

"Sounds...fun," Sadie said. She was becoming overwhelmed with all the commitments she was being prompted to make to see them outside of school, which Jasper found both adorable and encouragingly indicative of how similarly antsy she would be about making plans with _other_ people. He sent a wave of comfort her way- a slight one, since Edward was still eyeing him with displeasure.

"Checkers or chess?" Emmett asked Sadie, entirely out of nowhere.

"Um...I'm not great at either, but I like chess more," she replied.

"Video games?"

"Sure."

"What kind?"

"Sandbox or platformer."

"Ah, the two most different kinds. I see."

"I think I'll opt out of the dance," Bella said, with a bit of palpable smugness over the fact that for once Alice wouldn't be diverting any of her energy towards dressing her up.

Alice flashed her a look of mixed annoyance and amusement and did not argue with her. Returning her attention to Sadie, she suggested, "Maybe we can visit some stores this weekend, while you test-drive one of the cars. We can make a day of it! We probably won't find what we're looking for on the first try, but it would be fun if you could show us around."

"She can't just test drive _one_ car," Rosalie argued. "That's not nearly enough. Keep your shopping trips and your car days separate."

"Coke or Pepsi?" Jacob interjected. It was an inane question, but Sadie would be the one answering it, which meant it was still worth something.

"Neither; root beer," Sadie replied.

"With or without ice cream?"

"Yes."

"Right on."

"It'll take at least two trips before she's gotten to try out all the cars properly," Rosalie continued. "Cramming in shopping trips would be inefficient."

"A car a day and a store a day," Alice said pacifically.

"Vampires or werewolves?" Emmett asked wryly.

"Werewolves," Sadie said, though she was beginning to have difficulty focusing on both conversations at once. Poor human mind. "Less of a time commitment; it's only a full moon once a month, and I expect more exposure to sunlight than silver." None of those factors were relevant to them, but of course she would be thinking of it like this; very little was true in the prevailing vampire mythology. And anyway, it wasn't like that was a real choice she was making. Even if she didn't want to be a vampire, and even if her not wanting to be one mattered, one couldn't _become_ a werewolf.

Jacob jumped in, "Snickers or Hersh-"

"Would you two cut it out?" Rosalie asked. "You're making her dizzy."

"Now, Sadie," Alice said saccharinely, "How many dress shops are you aware of in this city? If our number of cars exceeds them, we can try nearby cities, too."

Sadie's overwhelmed feelings were growing again, and once more Jasper tamped down on them with a dose of calm.

 _"Cut it out,"_ Edward whispered, his disapproval tart and distracting. He really fancied himself enlightened, now that he had a daughter, didn't he?

Then again, he had been this way before, as well; he was obsessed with being interpreted as moral. His stint away from Bella, when he had been insisting that he just wanted her to be happy (all while making the rest of them miserable- Jasper the most so, as he'd had to taste the tar-flavored misery himself), had been an utterly transparent attempt to be as good a person as Carlisle was. (Carlisle had managed to let Esme live her own life for years before fate sent her back to him. Unnatural though it seemed for Jasper to leave either of his mates for even as much as twelve hours.) And then there was Edward's whole abstinence thing, which he had made into an ordeal for everyone, including himself...

Edward cleared his throat again, evidently annoyed by Jasper's train of thought.

Jasper's lips quirked into an unapologetic smile. It was true, and Edward knew it; he had been the most annoying, problem-causing virgin on the face of the Earth.

Unfortunately, Jasper's comeuppance for the mockery came almost immediately.

While Rosalie (evidently warming up to their mate in a way that Jasper couldn't help feeling smug about) was giving a comprehensive breakdown of what to look for in a car, Sadie finished her slice of pizza.

Jasper could not have explained his actions if he tried; he could only assume that his instinct to accommodate his mate interacted with the fact that he had no use for the pizza on his own tray in an unusually potent way. Under normal circumstances, he might have at least asked her if she would like his slice, but as it stood, he had no more air to speak with, and before he could properly think his actions through, and before she had even finished swallowing her last bite of the first slice, he had set his own plate in front of her with the promptness of someone who had been watching her eat. Which he technically had been.

He didn't even notice the weirdness (from an outside perspective at least) of his own actions until Sadie fully stared at him. Her bewilderment was not a bad taste, and her startled expression was even cute, but he could have done without Emmett's immediate raucous laughter and Edward's vindictive little chuckle.

"We're on a diet," Bella explained, which did very little to cover for Jasper's odd behavior but _did_ satisfy the criterion of ironically truthful wordplay. "Except Jacob; he'll eat anything meant for human consumption."

"We often give Jacob food; sharing is normal to us," Alice said, at such a measured pace (by vampire standards; none of her hesitation would have been detectable to humans) that she was likely piecing her words together with Sadie's speech about honesty in mind, as well. She hadn't said that they often _shared_ food with Jacob, for instance, because that wasn't quite true; Jacob could not drink blood, and they could not eat human food, so there was no sharing between them. But they _gave_ him food all the time. He was like a garbage disposal for their props. And still, it _was_ true that sharing was normal to them, in an unrelated way; they shared amongst _each other_ all the time. If Alice couldn't finish whatever animal she was draining, she would toss it to Jasper as a matter of course. "Jazz just wasn't thinking." Then she smiled triumphantly at having managed not to technically lie. Her self-congratulatory feelings made Jasper smile, as well.

Sadie's wariness eased at the explanation; she let out a polite "Oh, I see." Any apprehension that hadn't been taken care of by their words was polished off by Sadie herself, as she rationalized things in her head. Really the perfect mate for them; Jasper couldn't stop marveling at her. And she glanced at him perplexedly, as though wondering why he didn't say anything on his own behalf.

 _"Will you just go somewhere_ else _and breathe, if you're that scared you'll eat her?"_ Rosalie whispered. _"You haven't broken your record in decades; I doubt it'll happen here."_

With that bit of advice, Jasper got up and left.

Emmett laughing at him for the hasty, unceremonious exit all the while.

...

Sadie's assumption that there wouldn't be Cullens in her next class proved incorrect; after lunch, Jasper, Alice, and Emmett accompanied her to art class, this time with the inclusion of Rosalie.

"What are the odds?" Emmett said, grinning.

Sadie expected to feel a bit smothered, given how abruptly this friendship seemed to have escalated, seemingly outside of her control, but instead she felt completely relaxed. She had planned to take this class period to sort out her confused thoughts and irrational feelings about her new friends, but she supposed she could spend it _with_ them instead; at the very least, she could be alone once she was home, and spending more time with them gave her a larger sample of these weird and out of place feelings she kept having. If those feelings _were_ directly related to the Cullens.

And it wouldn't be too difficult to get out of looking at their cars this weekend, if it turned out she didn't like things moving so quickly. Especially since she'd already told them that she'd have to ask her parents.

Sadie pulled out her sandwich and celery, figuring that she would work on those while she worked on her art.

It was a free sketching day; Ms. Lee took a few minutes to introduce herself and the nature of the class to the Cullens, and then she directed everyone to work on expanding their portfolios. Some people still had more midterms to take, so it was likely that she was accommodating them with the more lax schedule.

"Did you draw that?" Alice asked, as soon as Sadie withdrew her sketchbook from her bag and opened it to a random page.

Her awed tone seemed so over-the-top, given Sadie's skill level, that for a moment Sadie could only blink at her before remembering to say, "Yeah, I did."

"It's so good!" Alice cooed, which was patently untrue. Sadie knew that she wasn't a _bad_ artist– her people looked like people and her ducks looked like ducks -but no one complimented her drawings. They were mediocre, and she was content with that, because creations didn't have to be extraordinary to be cathartic and fun to make.

"Thank you," she said. She couldn't deny that she was pleased by the praise; just because she knew that her drawings were mediocre didn't mean that she didn't appreciate compliments when she received them; positive reinforcement was called that for a reason, and dopamine was a heck of a drug. Still, she wasn't sure why Alice thought she had to praise her so energetically. "You don't have to say that, you know."

"Oh, I know," Alice replied, her eyes all wide and earnest. "I really like it."

The greedy dopamine fiend that lived deep within Sadie thirstily croaked _Tell me more_ , but Sadie merely allowed the flattered smile to sprout across her face (not like she could easily have stopped it) and sincerely repeated, "Well, thank you."

Alice seemed to know that more praise would be appreciated, though, as she elaborated, "I love the colors; I only draw in black and white, because when I add color it becomes a disaster. And I love the angles, and..."

Sadie mentally added this to her list of things that she would consider later: Was it inherently immoral that she was _more_ excited about seeing more of Alice when Alice was actively and profusely complimenting her? Off-the-cuff answer: Not inherently immoral, though she should make sure to not leech off of Alice's clear desire to make her happy. If Alice and Jasper wanted a friend and believed that giving her praise and buying her things was the way to make the friendship stick, then they were operating under the assumption that the gifts and praise were their payment for meaningful human connection, and it was her moral duty (or it might be; she still had to think more on it later) not to reap more benefits than she provided. 

Which, as a theoretical answer, was all well and good, but what was she to consider a benefit? If she went on the proposed shopping trip with Alice and allowed Alice to buy her things, as the smaller girl had repeatedly hinted that she would (to the point that, towards the end of lunch, Jacob had muttered "Cool your jets, Daddy Warbucks," barely loud enough for Sadie to hear), then was her company on said shopping trip Alice's reward for spending money on her? Because that seemed to be the system that Alice was setting up, and considering that Sadie didn't even really want expensive gifts, she doubted that it was a sustainable one.

Sadie again resolved to put a pin in this train of thought, and she turned the tables on Alice by asking, "Well, did you bring any drawings for _me_ to applaud?"

Alice beamed, pulled a tiny sketchbook out of her purse, and thrust it into Sadie's hands.

The images, as promised, were all in black and white. Most of them were vivid forest landscapes, with the occasional vague human figure.

Sadie smiled and unleashed _her_ praise, good-naturedly imagining Queen Latifah, in the movie version of _Chicago_ singing, "Reciprocityyyyyyy..."

...

They followed Sadie to her math class, too: the last class of the day. This time, Emmett and Rosalie were replaced by Edward and Bella, to make things the slightest bit less statistically improbable. Alice felt giddy, and she was pretty sure it had nothing to do with Jasper's interference. 

Sadie was on the right track towards loving them, they had received a text minutes ago informing them that the little job they'd given Nessie had been carried out flawlessly (and it was difficult for Nessie to do anything flawlessly, given how hard it was for Alice to plan for her, but Nessie had been the only one who could do this for them), and Sadie's presence was utterly intoxicating.

It was going to be excruciating to let her leave them at the end of the day.

Alice kept showing the eventuality to herself, as if that would make it easier. Jasper would have a harder time of it than she would, but knowing that in under two hours their perfect mate would be leaving them made her mouth fill with venom.

"Where is my calculator?" Sadie murmured agitatedly to herself, and Alice knew that Jasper was deliberately allowing their human's agitation to build, if not helping it along, just as well as she knew where Sadie's calculator was.

"Here, you can borrow mine," she said brightly. Giving Sadie multiple opportunities to feel indebted to them would yield better results, down the line. This much, they had been planning since last night, down to the details of slipping her calculator out of her bag during lunch.

"Thank you," Sadie sighed, running a distressed hand over her forehead before accepting Alice's offering.

Really, the sooner she loved them, the sooner she never had to be distressed again. That was the silver lining here.

The math class continued in a way that was functionally identical to every other math class Alice had experienced, with the notable exception of the angelic being whose very heartbeat outperformed the greatest, most impressive symphony.

"How will we let her go, Alice?" Jasper whispered, though they had gone over this before.

"There's still tonight," she whispered back. "She leaves us at three thirty-two; she falls asleep thirteen minutes after midnight. That'll be thirty-one thousand, two hundred and sixty seven seconds we spend apart, and we can count backwards the whole time."

Jasper's eyes, for lack of a handy clock face reflection to disguise the subject of his attention, were riveted on Sadie. She was too focused on her schoolwork to notice; she was filling out answers on her worksheet so quickly that she had to periodically stop and flex her hand. Muscle pain: not a problem she would have if she was a vampire. ("No, then she'd have different problems," Edward murmured snarkily. Bella was so used to him by now that she didn't ask who he was talking to.) Her head was bent so that her braids veiled her face like a curtain of beads; Alice wanted to run her fingers over them, but she restrained herself. She had been on the receiving end of enough tense, fidgety explanations of racial politics in her visions that she now knew, broadly, which pitfalls to avoid so that she didn't receive any of those same talks in real life. (Honestly, she'd learned more about that subject last night than she'd learned in the entire rest of her life, but to be fair she hadn't really sought out such information before.)

Anyway, she could touch Sadie's hair as much as she wanted tonight. If Nessie had remembered all of her instructions, and provided that they were careful, they would be able to touch her skin, as well, without waking her up.

"But _how_ will we let her go?" Jasper repeated.

"By remembering that if we don't, we'll make a horrible first impression and Edward and Bella will restrain us," Alice sighed. "That's why they're here, isn't it?"

Jasper was out of air again, so he didn't answer. He didn't move again for the rest of class, and he remained still when Sadie got up to leave them.

And if, after cheerfully wishing Sadie a wonderful day, Alice ended up biting part of the inside of her cheek off in the strain of not chasing after her, that was no matter; it reattached almost instantly, once she tongued it back into place, and the point was that she'd managed the impossible.

_Thirty-one thousand two hundred sixty seven. Thirty-one thousand two hundred sixty six._

"Bella, will you please shield them?" Edward murmured. "I can't listen to this for eight hours."

...

Sadie felt relieved, in a comfortably tired kind of way, when she made it home from school.

She didn't have plans with the study group today, because midterms were over; she had very little homework, again, because midterms had just passed. She could have a nap!

Probably not, though; lots to think about.

She used her own key to get into the house; neither of her parents were generally home at this time. She locked the door behind her once she was in, and she promptly plopped down onto the couch.

Meeting the Cullens had been...more emotionally taxing than it'd had any right to be. She had been disproportionately off-put by the tiniest things about them, and yet she had also felt disproportionate affection for them seemingly at random. They were an odd bunch- that was no longer a judgement, but rather an observation -but why had her heart seemed to jump into her throat when it had dawned on her that they were all freezing? Why had such a visceral defensiveness sprung up in that moment?

And why did she still feel unsettled now? Right now, with no Cullens present?

It was surprisingly easy to answer _that_ question: Because it was too quiet in this house.

"Brillig!" she called, sitting up from her lazy sprawl. Normally, her dog ran to investigate when someone came through the front door.

There was no sound of running, of paws on the carpet or the hardwood floor, or excited barking.

Sadie stood. "Brillig?"

It was too quiet. It _was_ too quiet.

The dread was back.

She ran to the pantry first, to make sure that Brillig hadn't gotten into any of the human food. The coast was clear there; deep breath. Next she ran for the laundry room, to be sure that the cleaning chemicals were undisturbed and Brillig hadn't managed to get stuck in any of the machinery. All clear again; another deep breath. She checked every room, every feasible hiding spot, every dog-sized lump, and nothing.

And he had no appointment planned today, and no arrangements had been made for him to be elsewhere.

Brillig had simply vanished.

...

The family meeting took place as soon as Carlisle got home from work.

Even Nessie was there, bouncing excitedly in place and just generally soaking in the drama of it all.

"So," Carlisle began heavily. "Evidently there are some things we need to discuss."

"Couldn't agree more," Jacob said. "You're telling me _this family_ hasn't seen _Silence of the Lambs_?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sure no one will have this interpretation, but just to be clear, since I know it was an Internet joke for a long time, the characterization of Bella as someone who doesn't emote on her face a lot isn't a dig at Kristen Stewart's acting. That's just how I thought to characterize Bella; Kristen Stewart is a good actress.
> 
> Thank you guys so much for commenting, and also **please keep commenting!** I love, love, love to read your thoughts, whatever they may be. Say whatever pops into your head; I'm game.
> 
> I promise that the pop culture references will not always be so constant.


	4. The Rule About Calling For Advice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slightly crass stuff is mentioned briefly later in this chapter; it's not too bad, and I try to be as highbrow about it as possible (if that's the right word), but it's still a bit more than I usually do, so just a warning for that. (Honestly, I went so vague with it you might not even notice.)
> 
> Also, I unfortunately did have to bring up Jacob's imprint in this chapter; it's not romantic, but it is the reason he's living with them at all, so it had to come up eventually. I try to mention it as little as I can.

Renesmee Carlie Cullen had had a very exciting day.

Well, she had spent most of the day being homeschooled by her grandmother, since she wouldn't be allowed in real school until her growing slowed down some, but she had had a very exciting lunch break.

She had gotten to run an errand for Aunt Alice, which was great because Aunt Alice never gave her things to do, and she had gotten to learn a few things about the new future member of the family. She had been given a very clear list of instructions:

_1\. Steal the dog._

Animals distrusted full vampires, but they liked Renesmee, especially since she could send them images of the hunt or of other fun things. Brillig was no different, except that he might have been friendlier and more trusting than any animal Nessie had met before. As soon as she'd broken into the Gilder home, the dog had been loping up to her and happily licking every bit of her in reach; Nessie had paused to give him lots of pats and kisses. The two of them got along swimmingly. That was a good thing, both because it meant she could get him out of the house without raising suspicions, and because it meant that Sadie was really nice to her pet. Renesmee really, really couldn't wait to meet Sadie.

In the meantime, she supposed Brillig was hers; no one else in her family would be able to take care of it, except Jacob, who would probably just give the dog back if he had that kind of access to it. That was another great part of the plan: Nessie had a dog, temporarily.

_2\. Turn down the thermostats._

She hadn't been given a reason why, because apparently the more she knew about the plan, the more she blurred the future (though she suspected that Aunt Alice had made that up just to avoid explaining things to her). But she had gotten it done, down to the detail of altering the temperature in the upstairs region of the house, where the bedrooms were, slightly less than she did the downstairs, so that the upstairs was not _as_ cold as downstairs, but still quite freezing by non-vampire standards. (Renesmee guessed that _that_ was because the Gilder family would be less likely to raise the temperature upstairs if they interpreted it as "warmer than downstairs" instead of just "cold". Aunt Alice really thought of everything.)

_3\. Steal some small piece of laundry from Sadie's room. Touch it as little as possible._

It was obvious why; they would want to get Uncle Jasper used to Sadie's scent before he would let himself breathe around her. Renesmee secretly hoped that Uncle Jasper would get _very_ used to Sadie's scent, or even have no trouble with it in the first place, because she really wanted another half-vampire in the family, and Sadie ( _Should I start calling her "Aunt Sadie"?_ ) and Uncle Jasper seemed like the only chance of that happening.

So she'd gotten something or other from a wastebasket and enclosed it in a ziplock bag, to preserve the freshness.

_4\. Snoop if you want; just be out before two._

Renesmee _did_ want to snoop.

 _Before_ breaking in, she had mostly wanted to know what Sadie looked like, but there were enough pictures around the house that she'd gotten the answer to that question while carrying out instructions 1-3. Sadie was beautiful, and she was bright-eyed, and she was brown-skinned: even darker than Jacob, which Renesmee found very exciting. Sadie did well in school, based on the honor roll certificates pinned to her bedroom's bulletin board ( _I want a bulletin board,_ had been Renesmee's immediate thought.), and she enjoyed the kinds of books that Mama thought little of, and she dressed in a casual way that Aunt Alice would _not_ allow to continue, and she wore her hair in more different styles than Renesmee thought she'd ever seen on one person. (She'd made sure to commit the styles to memory, so that she could show Mama or Aunt Rosalie later and ask if anything like it could be done to _her_ hair.)

She'd discovered that Sadie owned multiple swimsuits, which probably meant that she liked to swim (another selling point of being a vampire; she could hold her breath forever! Renesmee was jealous; she could only make it ten minutes, on a good day.), and that she wrote mostly in cursive, like Aunt Rose but not as tidy or sophisticated. She'd found that Sadie used a whitening toothpaste and the dry kind of deodorant and all kinds of human grooming concoctions that Renesmee had never even seen outside of a store. It had been weird to find all of this stuff on a bathroom countertop; most of Renesmee's family didn't even _use_ the bathroom. They didn't need moisturizers or acne medicine or antibiotic ointment, and they certainly didn't need a drawer full of "women's products", as Grandma called them when they went grocery shopping together.

Humans were fascinating, but Renesmee was pretty sure that Sadie would like being a vampire more. Mama did.

After all of that, it had just been a matter of getting back home with the dog (easy peezy), hiding it in the basement (which was soundproof by human standards), putting it to sleep (just to postpone the guaranteed eventuality of everyone finding out about it), and enlisting Grandma's help to get rid of the scent trail. Again, it was an inevitability that the whole family would know about the dog before long, but they didn't have to find out immediately, and waving the theft in their faces might annoy some of them enough to do something about it.

The excitement had died down, disappointingly, in the time after they got the dog squared away; Grandma had gone back to teaching Renesmee about history (human and vampire), and when the others arrived home in their cars and Jacob's bike, they were completely cool and collected. A little tense. But not bickering like Nessie expected, like they had been yesterday.

Mama and Dad kissed her on the forehead, on their way to put their school things in their room. (Their room in the main house was where they kept stuff for their human facade. It didn't have a bed, though; just a nice little loveseat where Nessie sometimes slept.) Aunt Alice grabbed the ziplock bag of Sadie's laundry from her and likewise stowed it upstairs. Jacob had, as always, come home with food, and he handed her the nuggets from his McDonald's bag (Human food was an acquired taste, but Nessie was slowly but surely acquiring it.) before throwing himself across the couch and almost immediately starting to snore, his backpack still on. (He napped almost until the meeting began.) Everyone else just sort of milled around in relative silence (Uncle Emmett heroically kept it from becoming awkward, by turning on the TV, which also made it less likely that anyone would hear Brillig.) until Grandpa got home from work.

Then they lost all pretense of calm and all started talking at the same time.

Aunt Alice was accusatorially pointing at Jacob (still a bit bleary-eyed), Dad was massaging his forehead in that way he did when everyone was being too much to handle, Aunt Rose was holding both hands up near her head in exasperation, and everyone's words were overlapping.

"...making a spectacle..."

"... _blocking_ my visions..."

"...shouldn't be allowed..."

"Please tell them..."

Mama wrapped one of her chilly arms around Renesmee and pulled her close. Her face was completely calm, except for the slight crease between her eyebrows. She was new to the family, and she wasn't used to all the arguing, and she didn't feel ready to take sides. At least that was what Nessie had been told. Personally, Renesmee was even newer to the family and _loved_ listening to the arguments and taking sides. But since Mama was uncomfortable, Renesmee put a hand on her shoulder and showed her a memory from one of their family vacations.

That made her smile.

Meanwhile, Grandpa held his hands up for quiet and said, "Let me put away my work things first, please." And then he walked upstairs at a downright human pace.

...

The family meeting started with Carlisle turning off the TV and Jacob telling an off-topic joke to break the tension, as always.

It was appreciated now less than ever.

"How was school today?" Esme asked. "How was Sadie?"

"She is just as divine as I predicted, and she fits in with the family tremendously," Alice said.

"We freaked her out, for sure," Emmett opined.

"And because of that," Alice said brightly, "she is now more likely to immediately believe us if we tell her we're vampires than she was before."

"We're not spilling the secret to another human," Rosalie protested. "You think the Volturi will be thrilled if our coven gains _another_ member? And we didn't exactly part on great terms last time."

"She's our mate," Jasper said firmly. "You don't expect us to leave her human!"

"She has parents, and a mortal life," Edward sighed. "She's in perfect health-"

"Glass houses," Jasper commented. "You changed Bella-"

"If you recall, I argued against that, too. I am not being hypocritical in the slightest."

"It's nonnegotiable," Alice said briskly. "Sooner or later, we're _going_ to change Sadie. I hope we can do it while remaining a part of this family."

"Of course you can, dear," Esme said quickly.

"None of us want you to feel that you can't stay," Carlisle agreed.

"Are you _kidding_ me?" Jacob said. "What if Sadie says no?"

"We will convince her," Alice said.

"What if she keeps saying no, every time? What if she can't be convinced? Do you still change her?"

"We'll get her to say yes eventually."

"You see, it's when you say things like that, that I start to think you intend to change that human against her will and then do damage control with her after."

"It's an option," Jasper said matter-of-factly.

"No it's not. And if we, as a family, don't _say_ that that isn't an option _right now_ , then we're all enablers."

"Pretty much everyone here got changed against their will," Alice pointed out, "and we're doing fine. Even Rosalie, now."

"Thanks for the shout-out," Rosalie said dryly. "For the record, my problem isn't the idea of changing the human against her will; my problem is the idea of changing the human when she has other choices."

"We were changed when the alternative was dying," Edward agreed, "not when the alternative was a nice, human life with human foods and human laws."

"Human senses, human strength, and a human lifespan," Jasper growled.

"Well, consider me the _one_ who cares about the 'against her will' part," Jacob said sourly.

"We care," Edward said, but in a strained enough tone that it was clear there was an implied "but", even though he didn't continue.

"She's sixteen or seventeen," Rosalie continued for him. "Her opinion isn't exactly a thing to base our plans around."

" _Well_..." Bella almost spoke up, but then stopped herself. She was the second-closest to Sadie's age here, so she probably thought the second-most of Sadie's autonomy, but she was also staying out of the arguments.

"I'm actually glad you brought up how young she is," Jacob said pointedly, and nearly all of the vampires in the room groaned.

"We're going to move forward with the understanding that they will have Sadie's permission before changing her," Carlisle said, in his most pacifying tone. "If Sadie is adamantly against the idea, then we will hold another family meeting to discuss how we proceed."

"Good," Alice said, not having lost her brisk tone. "Now, we need to set some ground rules with regards to members of this family approaching Sadie. Jacob already went rogue and turned the future to blurry Swiss cheese, and Bella already stole a bonding moment by recognizing the name 'Brillig' from Jabberwocky before I could."

"Sorry again," Bella muttered.

"Didn't you two say that your siblings are an asset, as far as wooing Sadie is concerned?" Edward pointed out. "How are we meant to be an asset if we don't talk to her?"

"Sadie is our mate, Edward. We get first dibs on relating to her and impressing her with literary knowledge. She's _ours_."

"About that, also...I don't quite understand how that even...works," Bella said primly. "There's three of you. Is that even something that happens?"

"Live longer, honey," Rosalie said, with a dismissive hand wave.

"Rosalie," Edward chided.

"What? We'll never get anywhere if we have to stop and explain to Bella that polyamory is a thing."

"'Poly' means 'many'; 'amor' means 'love'," Nessie chimed in.

"Very good," Esme praised, with a genuinely excited smile.

"I need to be there when you guys are around Sadie," Jacob said flatly. "In class and out. It's the only safe option."

"No," Alice said. "If you're there, we'll have no warnings at all. Any papercut or unwise move from Tactile Human Friend would come completely out of left field."

"Sure, sure. Counterpoint: I am the _only one_ in this family who would not be tempted to eat any of the humans present even a little bit. At all. Not the slightest bit appetizing to me. Sure, Emmett or Edward would be useful in stopping you from chomping someone _before_ the fact, but if you successfully manage to spill human blood, well now the humans are in the room with three or four hungry vampires instead of just two."

"Emmett, maybe; I'm very well-controlled," Edward said indignantly. "So is Bella."

"Bella's flawless record is based on almost no vetting; this is her first time in school as a vamp, and she's never come across a singer," Jacob argued. "No offense, Bells."

"Even counting your lack of bloodlust," Jasper interjected, "the only way you're a real threat to us is if you change into a giant dog; not exactly safe for the humans, either. The change alone could harm anyone. And the disadvantage of losing Alice's visions can't be overstated."

"I agree," Carlisle said. "The current arrangement, in which Emmett, Rosalie, Edward, and Bella alternate watching over Alice and Jasper, should stay in place. Though Jacob's concern is a good one. Perhaps all of you should make a habit of holding your breath as often as possible."

"I've got a concern," Emmett said, raising his hand. "Did something in the basement just move?"

"I heard it, too," Rosalie said.

Conversation lulled, so that everyone could listen. There was a definite rhythmic sound below them, like a heartbeat. Faint, due to their attempts at soundproofing, but definite.

Edward heard the explanation in four minds at once; he turned toward his daughter and sighed, "Really, Nessie? You've been breaking and entering today?"

Nessie, who had scarcely been punished for anything in her entire (short) life and therefore had no impulse to lie or even downplay her actions, beamed. "I ran an errand."

"She what?" Rosalie said.

"You what?" Bella said.

Nessie laid her hand on her mother's skin once more and showed her what she'd seen of Sadie's house.

Edward turned to Alice, next. "Would it even be worth asking you to leave my daughter out of this?"

"I _wanted_ to help," Nessie said. "It was fun!"

Emmett caught on and laughed incredulously. "Did you psychopaths steal her dog and hide it in our basement?!"

"I'm not a psychopath," Nessie said, pouting.

"I know, squirt," Emmett said easily.

"You're three; you're not responsible for what Aunt Alice tells you to do," Rosalie agreed, her eyes on Alice, who of course looked entirely unrepentant. To her, Rosalie said, "You've got children stealing dogs, now? What if something had happened?"

"Like what?" Alice asked. "Nessie's plenty capable of handling a dog."

"What if she'd been _seen_ , Alice?" Rosalie demanded. "What if someone had caught her breaking in? We'd have to move again, and then what? You kidnap your new mate?"

"I knew none of that would happen. I would have seen _that_."

"And if the dog had so much as bitten her, you know Jacob's protector instinct would have flared up as soon as he saw it, and who knows how _that_ would have manifested."

Everyone glanced at Jacob for a moment. Despite being the primary reason that he had to live with them and move with them, his imprint on Renesmee was thankfully a fairly unobtrusive part of him, except when something threatened to harm her or, rarely, succeeded in harming her. This hadn't caused any significant problems yet; so far, just a few bad arguments, when Jacob was still accustoming himself to his protective instincts and Bella was still accustoming herself to her vampire temper. But no one had ever been hurt over it, so far.

"Well, it turned out fine, so clearly I wasn't wrong," Alice pointed out.

"So, now you keep Brillig in an actual basement until one of you gets hungry and eats him?" Jacob asked.

"Animals aren't appetizing enough to tempt us unless we're really starving," Jasper said.

"Man, being a vampire's mate is just...the worst thing you can be, isn't it? You're not just planning on stealing her future; you've already stolen her pet."

Both Alice and Jasper hissed at him. Jasper went so far as to speed across the room to glare at Jacob. He was shorter than the werewolf, but not so much so that he couldn't look him in the eyes. And their comparable threat levels rendered the height difference irrelevant.

Jacob was not intimidated. In fact, he grinned. "Careful," he teased, "or I might have to crack open a Cold One."

Alice walked over, to reel Jasper back in. "Not funny," she chastened Jacob.

"It's a little funny," Emmett disagreed, "if maybe not smart."

Jacob flipped Emmett the bird, jovially, and Emmett returned the gesture with a grin.

"Boys," Esme chided.

Jasper did away with Jacob's feelings of amusement, and Emmett's, just out of spite. Emmett rolled his eyes at him, and the werewolf scowled.

"Alright," Carlisle regrouped, "now I'm beginning to see a recurring issue of control. The theft of the dog is perhaps more control than we should be comfortable exerting in Sadie's life at so early a stage in your relationship, and we should try not to make a habit of it. In the future, please consult other members of the family before resorting to such drastic measures, as those _without_ a human mate will likely see these issues more clearly. You could, for instance, have called me at work. That being said, this particular decision might be for the best; I understand there is a likelihood that you would kill the dog if it got in the way of your planned nightly visits, and we wouldn't want to upset Sadie that way."

"Gonna go ahead and pick my battles on the 'sneaking into her room' thing," Jacob mumbled.

"I do hope we can meet her soon," Esme said, with an already fond smile.

"I can show you her picture," Nessie offered, racing to stand between her grandparents and placing a hand on each of them, to send on the images of Sadie that she had found around the Gilder house.

"She's lovely," Esme gasped.

"We invited her to come look at our cars this weekend," Alice said. "And go shopping with us, for ring dance. We'll make sure to get lost, and unplug her phone the night before; that gives us an extra two hours with her, _and_ the exhaustion from figuring out the way back means she'll get to sleep faster that night. We-..." She broke off, then turned a downright venomous look on Jacob. "Don't. I saw that. Don't you _dare_."

"Saw what?" Jacob teased, even though Jasper ensured that he wasn't amused anymore.

"Nothing, which is my point. Whatever you briefly thought about doing, don't. I'm serious. If you do...Well, obviously I don't plan to kill you, because you're family, but I _can_ harm you with minimal consequences. You'll be badly hurt for a couple of hours or days and then completely fine. You know you couldn't take both of us in a fight."

Jacob's gaze oscillated between Alice and Jasper a few times before he shrugged and said, "Seems this conversation doesn't need me in it; my position's already clear." He glanced at Edward, whose lips twitched. "I'm gonna go far enough away to be able to find you freaks hilarious again." And he left the house, just like that. He did not start his bike, or phase; he simply walked out into the woods and kept walking.

"Is he planning something?" Alice asked Edward, and then immediately said, "Nevermind, you won't answer."

"Does anyone else have any complaints or concerns?" Carlisle asked.

"Is Nessie okay with having to take care of the dog?" Emmett asked. "Because she's the only one who can do it."

"Oh yeah," Nessie said, grinning. "I love Brillig; he's a sweetheart."

"I guess Auntie Alice will be taking the time to teach you how to manage dog ownership," Rosalie said. "Seeing as you're three years old."

"You feed it and take it out to do its business," Alice said, coolly because Rosalie just would _not_ get over the fact that she had used Nessie to steal the dog! It wasn't as though she'd had much choice. She'd _checked_ ; there weren't many good alternatives. "Simple as that. Jazz and I already bought dog food."

"Not to the toilet, Renesmee," Edward said, wincing as he heard the erroneous assumption in his daughter's thoughts. "Out to the _yard_. They do it outside, like other animals."

"Where outside?" Nessie asked, frowning now. "Just in the grass?"

"Just in the grass."

"Interesting. Can I teach him to use the toilet?"

"I'm sure Jacob would rather you didn't; he uses the bathrooms, too, remember?"

"Right, okay."

"Make sure you only feed him dog food, as well," Carlisle said gently. "Dogs don't eat the same foods humans do; some are poisonous to them."

"Worst case scenario, though, we buy another dog that looks like him," Alice said. "If it isn't as affectionate or familiar with her, we can say it's because she's been around vampires, or because he's been around vampires. Assuming by that point we've spilled the beans."

"Which is likely, given how eager you are," Edward said.

"Quite."

"So, to sum up," Carlisle said, "Nessie takes care of the dog, the class arrangements stay the same, Alice and Jasper will _try_ to have Sadie's permission before taking any steps to change her-"

"Unless the alternative is her dying in the immediate," Jasper interrupted earnestly.

"Yes, that's fine," Carlisle agreed. "And the two of you will call me or Esme before taking any drastic steps, right?"

"Yes, Carlisle," Alice sighed.

"Jasper?" Carlisle prompted, correctly assuming that it would be prudent to secure verbal confirmation from both of them. He didn't have Maggie's gift for detecting lies, and there were very few ways that he could hold them to anything they said, but he was reasonably sure that they respected him enough to _try_ to be honest with him.

"Where possible," Jasper agreed, "I'll do it."

That was likely the best he would get. "If that's all, then I hope all goes well, and I look forward to making Sadie a part of our family."

"Oh!" Nessie exclaimed, remembering something she'd forgotten to bring up. "Can Uncle Jasper try to make another hybrid, please?"

"Renesmee," Bella groaned, "please stop talking about adult things."

"Everyone else talks about adult things," Nessie complained.

"Everyone else is an adult."

"That's what I'm _saying_ ; we need another kid!"

"Too dangerous for the human, and we risk appearing to taunt the Volturi," Rosalie said. "I'm sure Aunt Alice and Uncle Jasper wouldn't try something so foolish."

"He could hold his breath," Nessie murmured.

"Okay, we're not talking about this," Bella said. "Feed the dog, then it's bedtime."

"It's not even dark!"

The meeting dispersed into clumps of conversation.

Esme flew to Alice and Jasper, asking, "How did it go with her today? Tell me everything." And they did, within reason, because Alice tremendously enjoyed Esme's doting, and Jasper appreciated her willingness to side with them and was fond enough of the mothering behavior that he didn't have the heart to bring up that he had been around significantly longer than she had and seen quite a bit more. Esme was a nice low-stakes morality chain, at the very least, and a genuinely endearing part of their life, at most.

Emmett sidled over to Edward and Bella, asking, "So, what's it like to be on this side of things?", while Rosalie went to tinker by herself, in the garage.

"It's...different, to be sure," Bella said, choosing her words carefully. "It didn't seem quite so calculated, when I was on the human end." She had her mind's shield peeled back, to be sure that Edward knew that seeing this side of things did not disenchant her with their romance in the slightest. "But then, that might be partially an Alice-and-Jasper thing."

"Well, I doubt they'll compose a sappy ballad," Emmett said, nudging Edward teasingly.

"We could if we wanted to," Alice called from across the room, raising her chin indignantly.

...

In their downtime between the family meeting and the exact time when Sadie would be sleeping deeply enough that they could visit her (and they were both still counting backwards for that), Alice and Jasper sequestered themselves in one of the family cottages located just far enough from the main house that no one could listen in on their conversations without going out of their way to follow.

"It'll be fine," Alice was saying, when Jasper hesitated to begin accustoming himself to Sadie's scent. To do so was necessary, he knew that, but to do it so soon before they visited her room? He certainly didn't want to activate his thirst now, though there was always the option of grabbing a bite before heading over.

But if Alice said it would be fine, then it would.

Jasper inhaled against the fabric.

As usual, when given such close exposure to a human's scent, venom flooded to his mouth. As less-than-usual, the venom also flooded... _not_ to his mouth. "Interesting," he said. "It seems knowing ahead of time that the scent belongs to my mate alters the reflex a bit."

"A bit." Alice smirked, and Jasper tasted her smugness at being right, mixed with mischievous amusement at the joke she was about to tell. "If Edward had had that reaction, things might have gone differently."

Jasper chuckled, then steeled himself, and inhaled again. Yes, Sadie's scent was appetizing. Slightly more appetizing than the average human, he would say. And the worst-tasting human was still better than the best-tasting animal. But his body was not reacting to it in _only_ the way it reacted to food. And that was enough to moderate the visceral need to attack something, though he did have to pull Alice close and kiss her immediately, to take the edge off other urges. _Mine. She's mine. Both are mine, but this is enough for now._ Alice was fully grinning by the time he pulled back. Her delight was a nectar on the air. 

"Is there a future where I eat her tonight?" he asked.

Alice's eyes unfocused, and they stayed so for nearly half a minute, which was probably a good thing in this context. Then she blinked, satisfied that she had explored every relevant path, and said, "Inhaling directly against her neck or other pulse points will be too much; at that point you will bite her, though you may be able to avoid killing her. Just barely. But so long as you aren't directly over her pulse, you can inhale without putting her in danger. Her parents are another story; if you lose control _without_ your nose against a pulse, you'll probably kill one or both of them. Which, while impressive given how physically close you are to Sadie in some versions where you redirect your thirst toward her parents, is obviously less than desirable; we want to be able to come back."

Jasper nodded, his already-furrowed brow furrowing further. 

"In general, though...you can breathe, Jazz. Maybe keep it to once every two minutes, to be safe, but you can breathe tonight. Which means you'll be able to talk more tomorrow."

That was better than he had been expecting, given his track record, but he still hoped to improve as quickly as possible. His motivation to not kill was so much higher when the potential victim was _his, his own, his mate, his love, belonging to him,_ instead of just any anonymous, ill-defined mass of emotions he didn't want to feel.

"And we can touch her, because Nessie made sure it's already cold in her room. Sadie makes the most adorable sounds when she's sleeping, I can't wait for you to hear." Alice blinked, then looked Jasper in the eyes. Hers were as wide as dinner plates, but that was by nature. "You have something you want to ask me."

Jasper required a moment of thought before he found that he, in fact, did. He went about it delicately. "What Nessie said..."

Alice nodded receptively, her expression not quite grave, but unenthusiastic.

"Do you see...?"

"No," she answered calmly, "but I wouldn't, would I?"

"Guess not." Jasper hadn't _set out_ to like the thought of creating a hybrid with Sadie, but the idea had intrigued him more and more. At first, he had thought that he was merely making a mental catalogue of every tactically disadvantageous aspect of such a suggestion, but then he'd found himself doing it for too long. And then he'd noticed that he wasn't so much keeping track of every reason they shouldn't do it, but rather analyzing said reasons, and finding caveats. Arguing with himself that the family already had one hybrid (and a werewolf, for that matter!), so one more couldn't exactly _double_ cloud Alice's visions, particularly if he or she was kept in the house with Nessie and Esme. And the Volturi now knew that hybrids weren't a threat, and that Joham was actively trying to sire many of them, so they couldn't justify picking a fight with them over another hybrid. And...

"You want one," Alice surmised.

"The idea interests me," Jasper said mildly. He couldn't say _yet_ whether he wanted one or not. But he had been operating for over a century on the premise that it wasn't an option, and knowing that it _was_ an option was some measure of a game changer. And wouldn't it be nice for there to be some living being who could preserve some of Sadie's human features (like how Nessie had precisely Bella's eyes), when they changed her? And wouldn't it be interesting to see how Sadie approached motherhood? He could tell that she would be well-suited to it; she had a strong sense of compassion, and a dedication to her moral code.

"Well," Alice said, with a bright tone that did not match her indifference, "if it turns out that a hybrid is something you want, I will help you make it happen. I won't be able to see, but we know how the pregnancy works now, and it isn't long."

The pregnancy. He hadn't even thought of that, so focused had he been on the product and the...prerequisite. Would he do that to Sadie? Put her through what Bella had gone through? Would he do that to Alice? Remove Sadie from her visions for a month?

 _It doesn't have to be a month,_ he thought. _The fetus is viable a bit earlier than that._

But still. Was he that selfish?

For now, he arrived at the tentative answer that he was not, though he had no certainty that he would stand by it.

_Eighteen thousand and one, eighteen thousand. Seventeen thousand nine hundred and ninety nine, seventeen thousand nine hundred and ninety eight..._

"Let's start planning for school tomorrow," Alice suggested. "Once we get to her room, we won't feel like talking about anything but her, so we should hash this out now."

Jasper readily agreed. It would be the three of them tonight, wonderfully and perfectly. Four was...excess.

"Can Bella be convinced to shield our minds from Edward?" he asked. "His mind-reading is something of a liability to us now."

Alice scanned the future for only ten seconds, this time, and then scrunched her face up. Distaste issuing from her like smog. "I'd have to exploit a lot of her personal weaknesses in order to convince her, and I'd rather not do that."

Jasper dipped his head once. "Too high a price for too little gain; we've managed with Edward in our heads for this long."

Alice flashed him a grateful look.

"When do you see us telling Sadie the truth about us?" he changed the subject.

More amusement, flavored by self-deprecation rather than mockery this time. Alice's smirk was back, and beautiful as ever. "I don't see a future where she doesn't know by ring dance."

There was a moment's silence before they both had to chuckle.

...

On the opposite side of the woods, Jacob Black made a phone call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, while I try to keep as much of the existing lore as I can, I have changed the nature of imprinting enough to completely get rid of the weird child grooming aspect. So, as it says in the tags, nothing romantic between Nessie and Jacob in the slightest. Another aspect of the worldbuilding that I am reluctant to include is the whole "vampirism gets rid of your melanin" thing; I'm still internally debating whether that's a part of this or not. But the worrisome things that the characters themselves have done are pretty much still in place, so look forward to opportunities to delve into that.
> 
> Thank you so much for commenting; please keep doing so! A lot of your thoughts have been really funny and really supportive.
> 
> This chapter was entirely POVs that weren't Sadie's, so we'll be hearing from Sadie a lot, soon. And, just in case someone was about to really get their hopes up, we're not getting a POV of their first night in Sadie's room. I just feel like it's more effective if we don't see it. At least not now.


	5. The Rule About Straightforward Communication

Sadie awoke feeling cold and calm, which was odd, since she had gone to sleep feeling cold and positively racked with anxiety.

Brillig was missing, with not even the slightest hint of where he was or how he'd even managed to get out of the house, and the stagnant panic was worse than anything midterms had inspired in her.

And it was back now, moments after waking, as the calm passed. Her heartbeat thumped more quickly, and she took a few deep breaths and made herself think optimistic thoughts. It had been less than twenty-four hours; he couldn't be far. They would find him. She'd looked up strategies for wrangling lost dogs, and Mom would bring up the topic to the others at work, so they would be keeping a wary eye out, too.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

She smiled at herself in the mirror, telling the little factory workers inside her brain to release that dopamine now, pretty please. She had felt so calm, moments ago. She must have had a nice dream; shame it was forgotten.

Sadie did all of the typical grooming things and got dressed. Earrings in. A fun few minutes of matching her lipgloss and eyeshadow to today's outfit; she didn't always wear eyeshadow, but today called for artistry, because she was sad and being artistic made her happy. She ate a slightly-overtoasted Eggo waffle for breakfast and turned on the coffee pot for her parents and was making herself a sandwich for lunch when the adults themselves arrived downstairs. She got a kiss on the forehead from both, and before long, Mom was driving her to school and intermittently dispensing words of encouragement about Brillig.

Then they were pulling up in front of the school, and she thanked her mother, shouldered her backpack, and stepped through the high school doors.

"Sadie!" a lilting voice was calling out to her, immediately.

Sadie was surprised to find that she had actually forgotten about her strange friends, in her worry for Brillig. But sure enough, as she turned, she found that Alice and Jasper were standing a few feet away from the door. Alice was beaming at her and rushed to grasp both of her hands (with surprising gentleness, which Sadie appreciated, since one of her hands still ached from Alice grabbing onto it so tightly yesterday), and Jasper was close behind, with a closed-lipped smile and a noticeably more relaxed disposition than he had had last time she'd seen him. Further proof that the odd first impression had been just first day jitters on the Cullens' part.

"Good morning," Alice greeted. Sadie wondered if she would ever get used to anyone being so happy to see her, but then, she doubted that Alice would or even could maintain this enthusiasm forever; eventually, the novelty would wear off. She sort of hoped it happened sooner rather than later; they were beginning to come across as a bit clingy, and they had known her for less than a day. "Would you look at that? We're matching!"

Sadie looked down at herself to remember what she was wearing, and sure enough, her whole outfit was in shades of blue, as were Alice's and Jasper's, down to the shoes. "Wow. Great minds think alike."

"They certainly do." Alice's eyes sparkled.

"You seem sad," Jasper observed, in his deep, soft, ambiguously accented voice, even though Sadie was quite sure that she did not look sad in the slightest; she was smiling, and she had a convincing smile. She knew this about herself, because no friend had ever observed that she looked sad before.

"No I don't," she said.

"Yes you do," Alice said. "What's wrong?"

The melancholy and anxiety that had been hanging over her all morning seemed to lift, then, and she felt almost silly (irrational though she knew that was) as she answered, "Just...my dog. Is lost."

"Brillig?" Alice gasped, her eyes going wide. "I'm so sorry to hear that."

"He'll probably turn up," Sadie found herself saying. "It's just never happened before." Maybe it was her friends' concern, but she felt substantially less worried than she had earlier. It should have been a relief, but it felt...off. Her dog was lost; she was _supposed_ to be worried, because that was the kind of thing that worried her. And if she stopped worrying, it ought to be because she reassured herself consciously, not because of some phantom feeling from nowhere.

"I'm sure he'll turn up," Alice agreed, even using Sadie's own words, while slipping her arm through Sadie's. It was just as ice cold as it had been yesterday, and she smelled possibly even more like flowers. "Say, we missed our first class yesterday; do you know where Johnson's Psychology class is?"

Sadie felt suspicious. No, not felt; she _felt_ perfectly at ease, but her mind was churning with that mix of curiosity and skepticism that she could only call suspicion. Did she share _all_ of her classes with these two? It had been a happy surprise to share _two_ classes with Colin, but _all_ of her classes, with Alice and Jasper, who had attached themself to her so quickly after seeing her? Because that was probably the real coincidence; not just having all of her classes with these two, but having all of her classes with them _and_ them having singled her out for seemingly no reason yesterday.

 _What exactly do you suspect them of?_ she asked herself. She supposed that her wildest, most tin-foil-hat theory was that they had arranged to be in her classes before meeting her. But how and why? Yes, new students could basically pick and choose the classes they started out with, but how would they know her schedule, and what would motivate them to follow it? Her mother had met Dr. Cullen before she had met them; maybe her mother had mentioned her, and Alice and Jasper had latched onto this for some reason? But her mother didn't know her school schedule; Sadie always had to remind her which class was her homeroom and which was before lunch and things like that, when it even came up in conversation. The idea that Alice and Jasper had not only sought out such information, but managed to access it, was pretty outlandish and maybe kind of self-centered. But still, the odds. She didn't share _all_ of her classes with _anyone_ , and the two people who had given her more attention in less than twenty-four hours than any of her classmates had afforded her since kindergarten would also be accompanying her straight through the school day?

"Sadie?" Alice prompted gently. "Do you know where Johnson's Psych class is?" She didn't look confused by Sadie's silence; she was wearing a cryptic, indulgent smile.

"Yes." Sadie glanced at Jasper and found that he looked as though he might laugh, but found it too ungentlemanly to do so. Honestly, it was a more human look (Hyperbolic. It was a more _accessible_ look) than any of the expressions he'd worn yesterday, so she decided to count her blessings on that. "Funny coincidence; that's my first class, too."

"How lucky are we?" Jasper said, and she thought maybe the unidentified accent she'd noticed was a Southern one.

"Very," Alice said. They started walking, and she ushered Sadie in front of them. "Lead the way, bluejay."

Sadie laughed. Her theorizing hadn't ceased, but Alice had managed to work in both a rhyme and a cute nickname, and she appreciated it. "I'm...on it...blue bonnet."

Both Alice and Jasper laughed, delightedly.

"I didn't expect you to say that," Alice said, with a slightly unmerited level of surprise.

"I just thought of it," Sadie said with a shrug. "It wasn't exactly locked and loaded."

"You just have a very creative mind."

Was that kind of...proprietary? The way Alice made pronouncements about her like that? And the pride with which she said it? It was a compliment, and friends complimented each other; on its face, it wasn't weird. Still, Sadie got a strange vibe. She had meant to dissect her feelings about the Cullens yesterday, but then...Brillig.

The appropriate anxiety, regarding her dog's safety and whereabouts, rose inside of her, but again it dissipated and yielded to calm.

Was this one of those 'adolescence' things? Did she think too highly of her own emotional regulation, to assume that changes in feeling should have some cause or reason? Maybe the erratic emotions were normal, and her confusion about them was just hubris.

Except this hadn't started until yesterday, she didn't experience it when she was home, and it had resumed as soon as she'd stepped through the doors of the school. And she felt pretty sure that associating certain feelings and thoughts with certain settings could only go so far, and certainly shouldn't suddenly start up after years of nothing; forgetting what one is doing just because you've changed rooms is one thing, but she was experiencing something different. Something that hadn't become a thing until...well, until...

_Alright, tin-foil-hat time, then._

"Here we are," she said, with a casual and blatantly unnecessary gesture at the classroom door.

"Does anyone sit next to you?" Alice asked. "Because we would love to sit next to you."

Clingy, but at least candid.

"It's tables instead of desks," Sadie explained, "and there are only seven students in this class- nine, now -, so everyone pretty much sits spaced out." Yes, it was just her, Colin, Kennedy, Natalie, and a few other students (who _hadn't_ joined the study group). A nice, vacuous classroom, and the lack of crowding allowed them to be very casual. Sadie, for one, valued the fact that she could let her backpack take up its own chair and prop her feet on another.

"How many seats to a table?" Alice inquired.

Sadie felt the same amused dread that one might feel if it started raining on the _one_ day they didn't carry an umbrella; the hilarious opposite of serendipity. "Three." The fact that her dread for having to sit next to her friends was at all comparable to one's dread for being rained on probably wasn't great, but she was simply used to a certain amount of space. It didn't mean she didn't like them.

"Perfect! How's about you sit in the middle."

It wasn't a question. The fact that it wasn't a question inclined Sadie to rebel, even in a meaningless way. "I'll take the aisle seat, actually, in case I have to use the bathroom."

Alice blinked, then, with a troubled expression as though worried she'd done something wrong, politely said, "Okay. I'll take the middle." But Sadie couldn't help imagining that she'd had half a mind to say, 'I didn't expect you to say that.'

A minute later, they were in their seats, and while Sadie was glad she hadn't followed the initial urge to be accommodating and take the middle when prompted to, she _really_ wished that she had just explained that she enjoyed having a table to herself; she liked her backpack and feet to have their own chair, darnit! She wasn't wrong for that, and she was normally better about communicating her preferences! Anyway, it looked weird that there were three of them sitting at one table when every other table had one person, max, and there were tons of empty ones. The other students flicked curious glances at them, and Colin walked up to introduce himself:

"Hi, you must be the Cullens. I'm Colin. We have the same history class, too, but I never got around to introducing myself."

"Nice to meet you," Alice said with a smile, but she didn't reach to shake his hand, and Jasper barely did anything to acknowledge Colin's presence, and eventually Colin returned to his own table.

Kennedy came up to introduce herself shortly after, with similar results.

Sadie was very glad to have pushed for the aisle seat; sitting between Alice and Jasper would likely have only increased the impression that she was occupying some social bubble with only the three of them. Apparently their excessive friendliness didn't apply to other people, not by half. She didn't know what to make of that, but she certainly didn't love it.

Emmett and Rosalie sauntered in a minute before the bell rang and took their own table together, at least decreasing the weirdness of table sharing by doing it themselves. Emmett waved at Sadie in greeting, with a smile that seemed to preemptively say, 'Yeah, I know; hang in there.'

...

History class was next, and fortunately, that was the class where Alice and Jasper would be sitting in the back, with Emmett. Meaning she would have some room to think over the weird pace of this new friendship.

"So," Colin said, as he sat beside her.

Sadie let out all of her breath.

Colin lowered his voice and covertly observed: "The Cullens seem like they like you."

"I can't imagine why," she said, just as quietly. She almost elaborated, _They just walked up to me yesterday, and they've been invested in me ever since!_ But she did not talk about people behind their backs, no matter how cathartic it might be. The thick gloss of calm that had been smothering her more natural reactions seemed thinner now, and she felt jittery, as though her blood were suddenly full of Pop Rocks. She changed the subject, "Let me know if you see a dog anywhere, okay? Brillig's lost."

"Oh no," Colin said lightly. "I'll keep an eye out."

She spent the whole of the class period sorting through her thoughts.

Okay. Most extreme scenario: Alice and Jasper were literally stalking her, and had taken active steps to learn her classes, end up in all of them, invite her to their lunch table, and organize out-of-school activities with her, all for unknown reasons. Unlikely, when it was laid out like that. She knew that stalkers existed, and she knew that Alice and Jasper exhibited _some_ controlling behavior (paying for her lunch, and all of the outings she'd been coaxed into agreeing to, including, she realized, one in which they might be _selling her a car_ ), but they hadn't moved into town until just days ago. Surely stalkers didn't latch onto people so fast?

She wouldn't eliminate the possibility based only on her assumptions of its unlikeliness, though; she had little enough worldly knowledge that lots of things sounded unlikely.

Least extreme scenario: Complete coincidence. Just a couple of lonely teens who were drawn to her and _no one else_ and happened to be taking the same classes. She reacted strangely to them because they were new, and the unfamiliar tended to make one uncomfortable. They acted controlling because they were young and lonely and didn't know any better, and while that didn't call for her to drop her defenses or her boundaries, it did inspire less concern than the more extreme theory.

She wouldn't rule this out, either, though she was scarcely more comfortable with it than she had been with the stalker theory.

Whatever the explanation, she didn't have time for mysteries. She had classes, and hobbies, and her _dog was missing_.

Sadie tuned in to the teacher's lecture for a few minutes, and took actual notes for awhile instead of doodling in the margins.

 _I'm leaving out some important data_ , she thought, zoning out again. _There's the rest of the family, too._ The rest of the family weren't odd in the same way that Alice and Jasper were. They were odd in totally different ways. Emmett and Rosalie seemed pretty much like normal people. Edward and Bella less so, but only because they were so closed off, almost aloof.

Jacob had gone out of his way to talk to her yesterday, and to impart some weird advice about changing up her plans. He had even said that it might be important. Jacob was also the only one of the Cullens (as far as she had met, at least) who wasn't ice cold, sheet pale, and golden eyed.

 _Maybe it's because he's the newest acquisition,_ a malevolent part of her suggested, in a chilling, overly-dramatic voice. _Maybe he'll look like that too, one day. Maybe you're next._

She rolled her eyes at her own ridiculousness. _Yes, yes, very spooky. Be serious, now._

She would simply have to talk to Jacob more.

There was a sound behind her; Alice had let out a small, plaintive squeak. Sadie managed not to turn and look; just because she was theorizing didn't mean she was no longer subject to her rule about trying to mind her own business.

Yes, she would try to talk to Jacob again, hopefully alone.

And say...what?

Her suspicions felt even less reasonable when she tried to word them in a conversational way. But she wouldn't forego voicing her confusion just because it made her feel silly. Probably. Hopefully not; she was a student of psychology, so she liked to think that she had _some_ self-awareness.

"Miss Cullen," the teacher suddenly said. "Mind putting that phone away?"

"Oh, sorry," Alice replied, and still Sadie faced dutifully forward as she heard the sounds of a phone being stuffed back into a bag.

The teacher was about to resume lecturing when Alice hastily spoke up again:

"Actually, may I please go to the restroom?"

She was permitted to do so; like always, she moved in quick, tiny steps, practically on tiptoe despite how much more effort that had to be than just walking normally.

Sadie eyed the bruise on her own hand and contemplated Alice's impressive physical strength. She skimmed her own memories, trying to recall whether she'd observed any other notable skills among the Cullens.

And then it occurred to her: _What am I doing?_ She was not a thumbtacks-and-yarn person; she believed in open communication. What was all of this covert speculation business? _Am I being a bad friend?_ she asked herself tentatively.

She tuned in to the teacher for another few seconds, to give herself time to recover from that question.

Then she decided that no, she was not being a bad friend, particularly. She was just being immature. And she would try to stop that now.

...

"Jacob won't be eating with us today," Alice said, again approaching Sadie as soon as the bell rang for lunch. "He's got schoolwork to take care of."

Another coincidence, that Jacob should become unavailable right when she hoped to talk to him. Or, to think of it more optimistically: Jacob was isolating himself from the rest of the family, right when she hoped to get him alone.

"Schoolwork?" Sadie echoed, casually. "Where?"

"Don't know; I didn't ask him. Come on, let's go before the line gets long. Unless...You...do still want to eat with us, right? Sorry if I'm kind of pushing..."

"No, it's fine," Sadie said, endeared despite herself by Alice's moment of contrition and reflexively offering reassurance. _That doesn't mean you neglect your own boundaries,_ she told herself, firmly. "I don't need the lunch line, though," she continued. "I made a lunch."

"Are you sure?" Alice asked. "We can buy you one."

"No thanks. I'm good." In a split second, she made a decision. "Also, I talked to my parents, and it turns out I won't be going to look at the cars or go shopping or anything. Sorry." (Technically true: she _had_ talked to her parents, just not about this; it _did_ turn out that she wouldn't be going, because she didn't want to, now that there was so much on her mind. Vaguely deceptive faerie-talk was not lying.)

Alice's eyes widened only a little, and she was opening her mouth to reply when Sadie hastily continued:

"Third thing, unrelated: Do you guys have any...ulterior motives for accelerating our friendship?"

Alice shut her mouth, then cocked her head a little, looking almost impressed but mostly flabbergasted by the question. Neither she nor Jasper asked what Sadie meant by 'accelerating our friendship', for which Sadie was relieved; at least they weren't going to be coy about how uncommon this pace was.

"Why?" Jasper asked, smoothly and calmly. "Did somebody say we did?"

This _was_ faerie talk, the answering-a-question-with-a-question thing. "No. Do you have reason to expect somebody to say that you do?"

Jasper smiled and seemed about to parry that response in much the same way, so Sadie quickly pointed out:

"Also, you didn't answer my first question."

Emmett whistled as he walked past them out of the room, as if to say, 'Oh boy.'

"Define 'ulterior motive'," Alice tagged in.

Sadie thought it over for a second, wording her responding question in as airtight a way as she knew how. "Is your sole intention in pursuing my friendship just to be my friends?"

Alice's eyes were meeting Sadie's but they appeared to be staring _through_ her for a moment, before they came back into focus. "No," she replied, after several seconds.

Sadie inhaled. That was a candid answer, though not an encouraging one. "What are your other intentions?" she asked.

Jasper was looking to Alice, waiting on her response. Alice carefully laid her hands on Sadie's upper arms, nearly making her shiver, and serenely said, "We...are interested in pursuing you romantically."

Now it was Sadie's turn to open her mouth and then wordlessly close it. Well... "Huh." That was... "That's...honestly not an answer I expected at all." And it did _nothing_ to answer any of her other questions, by the by! It _just_ threw a new weird factor into everything!

Alice dropped her hands, winked, and wryly said, "Now you know how I feel."

...

Edward's thumb stroked the back of Bella's hand, under the table.

Jacob was absent from the cafeteria, so none of them had ordered lunches; they just had various fruits scattered about the tabletop, for show. Bella's other hand rolled an apple around under her palm. The apple was protesting slightly, audible to their ears, so Bella decreased the pressure she applied. It was one of her exercises in physical restraint. As she was out of her newborn stage, she had the motor skills to not crush the whole table (not by accident anyway), and she had the motor skills to not pulverize the apple, but to only apply a human amount of force in her casual motions was a more specialized skill. The rest of them were still mastering it, themselves.

Bella, Edward knew, was taken enough with vampirism that she didn't think much of many aspects of their human charade; she did not like to have to ride a car, for instance, when it was so thrilling to instead use her own superhuman strength, speed, and stamina. But this exercise she enjoyed, because training herself to control these abilities in such an active way made her ultimately all the more aware of them.

Edward watched her make her motions and adjustments with a fond smile, while keeping track of Jasper and Alice and Sadie with a different part of his mind. 

The three of them were not in the cafeteria yet, but would be in moments. Emmett had arrived a minute ago, and was oscillating between whispering sweet nothings to Rosalie (any time apart was distressing for most mated pairs, but fortunately in Rosalie and Emmett this aversion to separation manifested almost exclusively as sap and melodrama) and asking Edward for updates on the others' conversation.

"They told her that they're interested in her romantically," Edward reported.

"Oh dear," Rosalie sighed.

"How is she reacting?" Emmett asked.

Edward tilted his head. "Don't tell them I said this, but she really would benefit from the expanded mind-space of a vampire," he opined. "She's trying to account for more concerns, suspicions, and maxims than her human brain is comfortable juggling at once, and she's overwhelming herself with it. And Jasper keeps calming her down, which makes it harder for her to remember all of her concerns, which distresses her again; it's a vicious cycle, and I've told him multiple times to stop doing that. Fortunately, observing how his interference confuses her has made him more receptive to my suggestion that they just comfort her the normal way, at least until she knows about his power."

"'Until she knows'; it's awful that we've just accepted it now. I assume everything's developing in accordance with Alice's plan, though," Rosalie said resignedly.

"Actually," Edward said, with a smug smile, "she's surprised them a few times today. That's part of why Alice had to ask Jacob not to eat lunch with us."

" _Part_ of why?" Bella repeated.

Edward hesitated. Sadie's hopes to confer with Jacob, and Jacob's own side-machinations, were not things that necessarily needed to be said aloud. Not while Alice and Jasper were so close to entering the cafeteria, not around Emmett and Rosalie (who, in their respective impulsiveness and stubbornness, were the worst at concealing new plans from Alice, even fleeting ones), and not given Bella's want for neutrality. "Are you more curious, or more impartial?" Edward asked her, giving her a chance to come to the same conclusion he had.

"More impartial," she relented.

"There they are," Emmett observed, as, indeed, the trio entered the cafeteria, all dressed in their cerulean blue. Alice had her arm hooked through Sadie's and a determined smile in place, while Jasper walked on Sadie's other side and alternated between staring at each of his mates. Sadie had the disposition of someone who was committed to taking everything in stride, though her brow was furrowed and her eyes unfocused, because she was deep in thought. "She backed out of their weekend date," Emmett added, as though it had just occurred to him to mention it.

(Whether or not the word "date" was really accurate was a sort of semantic quandary that Edward didn't feel like navigating, and Emmett certainly didn't give it that much thought.)

Rosalie let out a vindictive little chuckle.

"Alice texted Carlisle about that, a few moments ago," Edward said. "Hoping he'd intervene with her mother. Of course, Sadie's parents never actually told her that she couldn't go, but having her mother explicitly tell Carlisle that she _is_ allowed would embarrass Sadie enough to go through with it. Fortunately, Carlisle advised Alice to do a few meditation exercises and then see if she still wanted to manipulate her mate that way, and she found that she does not."

"Points to Carlisle," Emmett said.

"And points to Alice for getting ahold of herself; I'm sure it's hard for her. Jasper is...doing a good job," Bella observed. "Breathing around Sadie, I mean. He's not nearly as stiff as he was when I met him."

"He's more motivated to improve now," Edward said. "And...Sadie doesn't smell quite as tasty as you did, love."

Bella smiled, and Rosalie exchanged a disgusted look with Emmett. (Those hypocrites; they'd been canoodling just moments ago.)

The trio reached the table a few seconds later. They went through the same scooting-down procedure as they had yesterday, with the exception of Jacob's role in it, and Edward heard Sadie again internally observe that the seat that had just moments ago been occupied by one of his relatives did not feel warmed by body heat in the slightest.

"Sadie isn't allowed to come over this weekend, according to her parents," Alice announced, "so you can stop polishing the cars, Rosalie."

Edward gave Alice a somewhat withering look, as he found this comment not that much better than the manipulation she'd decided _against_. Alice fought back by deliberately calling to mind memories of every future she'd seen in which he'd killed Bella, or Jacob, or various human innocents who had seemed less innocent when his mate had been human and vulnerable and not his. Edward felt appropriately sickened with himself, but his dislike for Alice's tactics remained.

"I never stop polishing them," Rosalie said coolly. "And I would never want Sadie to think she has to come over on my account."

"Nor would I," Alice said, chipper of tone.

Sadie crunched at a piece of celery. "So, how's everybody's day so far? You guys settling in well?"

"As well as ever," Rosalie answered. Her willingness to respond to Sadie spoke volumes, given how rarely she'd spoken to Bella. (Unfairly, of course, but Edward was less annoyed by that now that she accepted his wife and cared for his daughter.) "This school is no different from our last."

"I suppose it wouldn't be," Sadie said. "And there are a lot of you, so fitting in probably isn't as much of a concern. You guys seem to hang out together a lot."

She was probing. Edward hid a smile.

"Well, we're a family," Bella said.

Sadie nodded, then asked, "Where's Jacob again?"

"Doing schoolwork," Alice said.

"So you didn't get lunch today, because he's not here to eat it for you."

"That's right."

Sadie eyed all of the untouched fruit, and the apple that Bella was still rolling between her palm and the table. "What kind of diet is it that you're on?"

"A very strict one."

"Right, but what foods exactly?"

"That's a good question."

"If you can't come this weekend, when are you available?" Jasper inquired.

Sadie blinked, mildly astonished that they were dodging what she deemed a pretty safe question. "Well..." She shook her head and had to take a moment to process what Jasper had asked. "It's not really a matter of availability; my parents don't know you." She had been careful about putting together the two independent clauses in a manner that implied causation, without actually stating that there was causation. Putting her own rules for deception into practice.

"Then we just have to meet them!" Alice said triumphantly.

"That...certainly sounds like the conclusion one would come to," Sadie said slowly, realizing the soundness of Alice's argument in real time. She was apprehensive about the implications of introducing them to her parents, but amenable to the idea of meeting with her new friends on her own territory instead of theirs. "Sure, I guess you can come over..."

"Is Saturday okay?" Alice asked.

Edward saw the plan, fully formed, in Alice's mind, and he nearly groaned aloud.

"Um, sure," Sadie said. She had ended up with roughly the same commitment as the one she had gotten out of, but at least now she would have her own parents as backup, the security of her own home as the setting, and no obligation to go to the mall (especially since she intended to ask her parents not to give her permission to do so, if Alice brought it up).

Edward looked from Alice to Jasper and near-silently whispered, "Just don't overwhelm her."

"Of course not," Alice whispered back, and Jasper made a face as though offended at the mere suggestion.

Rolling his eyes, Edward hoped that Jacob's planning was going well.

...

Sadie spent art class ruminating again (and was pleasantly surprised that Alice didn't do anything to interrupt her thoughts), and she came to a few conclusions. The fact that Alice and Jasper were purportedly interested in her romantically (Both of them. Gosh, she was too repressed for this.) did not change the weirdness of them having ended up in all of her classes, nor did it do much to explain how and why they had attached themselves to her _immediately_ upon seeing her, with no conversation between them. It did contextualize why they were so exclusive about it, though; being distant with Colin and Kennedy was odd behavior for lonely kids who needed friends, but not so odd behavior for people being approached by strangers while hanging out with their...crush.

_Crush is a weird word. This is weird._

Sadie had had people _like_ her before, but that had always been carried out in the time-tested and juvenile game of telephone that was rumor-spreading; if a guy liked her, his best friend told her about it, or the guy himself told one of her friends, or the guy's best friend told one of her friends, so that she could giggle about it and never do anything to act on it because again, she was _too repressed for this_. Finding out that someone liked her was supposed to be a momentary high and then back to business as usual. She had learned the script for it. She had not learned the script for being _pursued_ ; what was she supposed to do with that? Was she supposed to just _know_ how much of her emotional energy she should allow herself to allocate to this so that she didn't hurt or neglect them but also didn't leave herself vulnerable to hurt or neglect? Hadn't she designed her whole headspace around the fear of hurting others or being hurt by others? Given herself rules, protections?

 _Huh. I think I might have some hangups here._ Fascinating. So there was her own guardedness to account for, too.

At the start of math class (in which they would fortunately just be working on packets, in groups), Sadie finally felt ready to address what she'd been mulling over in art.

"Okay," she said, and Alice promptly set down her pencil and turned to face her. Jasper hadn't even indulged the pretense enough to hold his pencil; he immediately turned to face her as well, evidently having only been waiting for acknowledgement. "So, you guys...you..."

"... _like_ you," Alice assisted gently. "In a romantic capacity."

Sadie looked at Jasper, who seemed, as always, content to let Alice speak for him. "Right. You both feel this way?"

Two heads nodded. The corner of Jasper's mouth rose into that becoming-familiar tightly-closed-lipped smile, his posture stone straight but relaxed, as though he was willing to sit there forever and listen to Sadie figuring things out. Alice looked less patient, more excited, as though she were reading a suspenseful section of a really good book. Both way too focused on her. Were they even blinking? The raptness of their oddly-colored eyes was a touch distracting, and the unfamiliar situation already had Sadie feeling all...peculiar.

"Don't worry," Alice suddenly said. "We don't expect you to reciprocate before getting to know us; the weight of earning it is on us, not you."

Well that was a load off. Actually several loads off. But not all of the loads. "When...did it start? And I don't mean that in a...I'm not fishing for flattery. I'm saying, you met me _yesterday_ ; how and when did those feelings start?"

"If I answer with complete honesty, you will only be more confused," Alice warned her.

"Thank you for the warning, but since that question is pretty pivotal to my understanding of everything else, I'm going to need the answer anyway."

"The feelings started before yesterday. For me. Yesterday for Jasper."

Sadie's gaze unfocused as she worked that one out. "Before...hm." Okay, this actually had the potential to make sense of a lot of the unanswered questions; if they (or just Alice, it sounded like) had seen her before she had met them, then that explained why they had been to ready to get close to her upon seeing her. It didn't explain how they'd gotten into her classes. Actually, it made _that_ part a little eerier. Less plausibly coincidental. But how could they have learned her classes? Psychology, sure; she had been studying it at the library, and they could have happened to be in the library at the time. But her exact schedule...Okay, back-burner. "Did you...see me somewhere? Were you at the library when I was with my study group or something?"

"That would be a sensible explanation," Alice lauded cheerfully. "But I'm sorry to say the actual explanation is not one you're going to consider very soon. We didn't see you in public, your mother didn't mention you to our father, and we have not interacted online."

Sadie imagined she looked a bit like a fish, when her mouth rapidly opened and closed as Alice casually shot down each guess that her mind came up with, _in the order_ she had thought to present them.

"I simply saw you before I saw you," Alice finished, with a sunny smile.

The feeling that she was in a fantasy story increased. Sadie gaged, from Alice's ambiguous wording and the way she and Jasper were looking as though Sadie was simply the most adorable, enchanting person they'd ever seen, that asking for a more sense-making explanation was the wrong play. "Interesting," she muttered, and she meant it; as much as she felt she ought to be frustrated, she would much rather this conversation continue to veer into the straight-up bizarre than have it stay the original course into awkward teen romance territory. "Do you often see people before you see them?"

"I do. It's how I met Jasper."

Sadie frowned a little. " _Met_ him?" She struggled to reconcile Alice's phrasing with her own understanding that the Cullens had met the Hales when the latter had been adopted by Dr. and Mrs. Cullen.

Alice grinned wider. "I knew you were smart."

"I...appreciate the compliment. Let me see if I understand, though: You 'saw me before you saw me', and at that point you developed romantic feelings for me. The day before yesterday. Is that correct?"

"Yes," Alice giggled.

Like a psychic vision situation? She put a pin in that question. "And you-" (She turned to Jasper.) "-did _not_ see me until you saw me..." She was beginning to feel silly.

"That's right," Jasper said encouragingly.

Sadie sighed. "At which point you also developed romantic feelings?"

"Yes, I did."

"Yesterday."

"Yes ma'am." The sheer Southernness disarmed her for a second, but she regrouped:

"Is it common for the pair of you to develop romantic feelings for the same people?"

"We've never fallen in love with anyone but each other before now," Alice said. "But to the spirit of your question, if either of us fell in love with someone new, both of us would have to; that's...part of it."

Half of Sadie was intrigued by the all-or-nothing rule that had just been introduced to her, and why it might be the case- whether it was maybe a codependency thing or what. The other half was bewildered by the introduction of the word "love" to this conversation. She wondered if maybe Alice and Jasper had some sort of attachment disorder that resulted in overly-affectionate behavior toward strangers. She had read about something of the sort in her psych textbook, but the book's example hadn't been nearly so exclusive...

"You're doing very well," Alice added, laying her icy hand gently over Sadie's.

"Separate topic," Sadie said, glancing down at where their hands met, "and sorry if this is a rude observation, but a lot of you guys seem to be freezing cold, all the time."

"Not rude at all; you have more restraint than most," Alice said. "It's true that we're all cold to the touch, except for Jacob and Nessie- Nessie is the youngest; she's homeschooled by Esme, our adoptive mother. To put it concisely, it's a circulation-related condition." She winked playfully.

 _That's right, the youngest._ Apparently she was another outlier...in the same category as Jacob? The way Alice had phrased it, it seemed the Cullen parents were like the rest of them. That might be easy to verify; just ask Mom if Dr. Cullen was, perchance, colder and paler than death itself.

 _Hyperbolic,_ she chided herself.

 _Comedic effect,_ herself appealed back.

Yeah, fair enough; there was room for hyperbole in unspoken jokes. _Focus!_ She had so many questions now, especially now that Jacob's differences from the rest of the family had come up and especially especially since she now had another example of a member of the family who differed from the rest.

But again, Sadie gathered from the vague wording that it would be better to pursue other questions than keep digging into this one. "May I know the reason you're being deliberately mysterious?"

"It's better to explain things gradually." Alice's thumb stroked comfortingly against the side of Sadie's hand; her hand was still atop Sadie's. Sadie was still not accustomed to the cold. Surely her hand should have warmed Alice's by now. "Believe me, we're tempted to tell you everything right away, but...I happen to know that isn't for the best. And..." Now Alice's eyes unfocused again, as though she was processing new information. It only lasted a moment, though; shortly, the brightness returned to her gaze, and she continued, "To put it simply, it would be against the rules."

Sadie could understand rules. She accepted the explanation, at least for now. "To be clear, though, you are withholding information?"

"Yes, we are."

"May I know _which_ information you're withholding? What it pertains to, I mean- exactly which doors are closed here?"

"If we give you that information, then you're two guesses away from figuring it out," Alice said, not in exactly a tone of denial, but rather as though she was considering whether she was willing to just let Sadie guess the truth here and now.

Then Edward asked the teacher to demonstrate one of the problems from the packet on the board (both Alice and Jasper flashed matching annoyed looks in their brother's direction), and their conversation effectively paused; Sadie didn't talk while the teacher was talking, when she could help it. Anyway, she felt the discussion had been fairly productive. Assuming they had been honest with her, she now knew that Alice and Jasper were following rules of their own, though she did not know whether the rules were from their parents or self-imposed or even contractually enforced, and that these rules were the reason for at least some of the mystery. She knew that Jacob and Nessie (the youngest) were the not-cold ones, though they hadn't told her why. She knew that Alice and Jasper liked her romantically (and were _way_ too liberal with the word "love", but then maybe she was just too conservative with it; she made a mental note to self-evaluate there.) and considered themselves responsible for whether or not she ever returned the feelings, which did not sound as good in this internal review as it had at the time Alice had first brought it up; she made an additional mental note to examine how her own need to not be held responsible for other people's feelings took precedence over her friends' clearly-unhealthy level of dedication to such a degree that she hadn't even registered the latter until now.

This was really confusing, but she couldn't deny that her interest was piqued. The rule about minding her own business was hardly relevant anymore; Alice and Jasper were actively reeling her into their life (lives?), and figuring out what was going on with them was almost a matter of self-defense. If there was something sinister afoot, it was better to know before she was in too deep.

Sadie glanced again at where Alice still had her hand over her own; the other girl was looking at their hands, too, and smiling dreamily, slowly and minutely caressing Sadie's skin with her thumb.

Then she glanced at Jasper and felt instantly embarrassed as she met a pair of eyes like odd gold coins. Already looking at her.

_I'm in too deep._

...

Before the end of the school day, both Alice and Jasper had secured Sadie's phone number, which seemed kind of redundant (Did _both_ of them really need it?) but also like something she was surprised they hadn't done yesterday.

When the bell rang for the bus riders to leave class, Sadie rose from her seat beside Alice...and hesitated.

Somehow, in only two days, she had found herself seemingly _enmired_ in other people's feelings, and she didn't know how or why, and for a moment the prospect of letting the perpetrators into her house seemed like the crossing of some irrecoverable boundary. It would be rude to cancel over text, but she could cancel right now. She could.

But...

Darn it, she was _curious_ now! There was something going on that was incompatible with her understanding of how things worked and how people worked, and she wanted to _know_. If she canceled now, she might never get to adopt these mysteries into her mind's library, and Alice had said she was close to figuring it out! However Alice could even know something like that.

And assuming they weren't just messing with her.

If they were messing with her, she would literally never speak to them again.

"Saturday morning, after breakfast, okay?" Alice reaffirmed their plans.

"Right," Sadie agreed. She could stand to be more social, anyway. She would just have to make sure that she didn't relinquish her control over the situation.

She hefted her backpack and left for the buses, covertly hoping that Brillig would be back home when she arrived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait; I meant for this to be up a couple of days ago, but I had issues with my WiFi right after posting the new chapter of Quite Harmoniously.
> 
> K, so I've decided that the whole 'vampirism gets rid of melanin' thing is just not canon in this fic, because it was a pretty gross world-building element to start off with and I don't want it. So, that was me keeping you updated on that mental journey, lol.
> 
> I recently discovered the "Twilight the Musical" thing on YouTube, from many years ago, and The Cullens song from part 3a is very stuck in my head. _Edward Emmett Alice Jasper Carlisle Esme Rosalie!_
> 
> Please comment! Thanks for all your thoughts!


	6. The Rule About Getting in the Way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Believe it or not, I rushed this one.

Sadie briefed her mother on the fact that two of the Cullens would be visiting this weekend, and on _some_ of the background for the situation. "I implied that you said I couldn't go to their house or to the mall with them."

"Alright," her mother said. She had long ago permitted, and even advised, that Sadie could use made-up parental concerns to get out of social engagements. "Is it that you don't like them very much, or did you just not want to go?"

"The latter, though I am also figuring out the former; I don't know how I feel about them, because I don't know what their deal is. They've been nice, though, so I don't want to hurt their feelings."

"Well, I'll be home." It was a passive sort of reassurance, but well-appreciated. Her mother pecked her on the forehead and then retired to the living room recliner with a book and a bowl of cereal.

Sadie took her cereal to the kitchen table, and ate at a leisurely pace. She would text her friends once she was done eating, but now she would build her mental stamina for the cryptic statements she had no doubt they would still be making.

...

There was a knock on the front door less than thirty seconds after she texted saying she was ready. (Barely explained away by the text Alice had instantly sent back, saying "Great! We're not far." Sadie wondered if she should try to interpret that to mean that they had happened to be nearby anyway, for an unrelated reason, or that they'd been parked outside, waiting for permission to come in.)

Sadie opened the door, and there Jasper was, standing on the doorstep. (From the sounds of it, Alice was still closing her car door.)

"Hey there," Sadie greeted Jasper. "Did you guys have any trouble finding the house?"

A cryptic chuckle. "No, we didn't." (Sadie couldn't be _certain_ what it meant for someone to cryptically chuckle about whether they'd had difficulty finding her house, but she didn't love the implications.) Rather than walk inside straightaway, Jasper smiled in his usual closed-lipped fashion and, with his eyes never leaving her (to the point that her face already felt a little warm, and they weren't even inside yet!), stepped back to hold the door open for Alice.

But it was not Alice who entered first. It was a young girl- she looked about eleven -with curly, red-brown hair and rich, brown eyes and pink cheeks and an enthusiastic smile.

"Sadie!" the girl exclaimed, and wrapped Sadie in a warm embrace (Warm, not ice cold...) that smelled not unlike a candy shop.

"Uh, hi," Sadie responded, switching into her slightly-brighter _I am talking to a child_ voice but very much still processing what was going on.

"We had to bring her," was all Jasper said, leaving it ambiguous whether this was a babysitting thing or what. Regardless, Sadie couldn't help finding it sweet that they were taking care of their younger sister- at least, she assumed this was their younger sister.

"Well, hello," Sadie said to the child, hoping that she was managing a tone that was joyful enough to make her feel welcome but not so joyful as to come across as condescending. An eleven-year-old was a far cry from a five-year-old. "What's your name?"

The girl jumped back from her, then, and offered a hand to shake (as if they hadn't already hugged). Sadie shook the girl's hand, her smile at the antics completely genuine. "I'm Renesmee Carlie Cullen; it's great to meet you. I kept asking them to let me; I was supposed to see you when you came over, but then you changed your mind-"

Jasper cleared his throat. "She promised she wouldn't be excessive," he said. His expression of fond annoyance, as he regarded his younger sister, was...surprisingly endearing. Sadie wasn't prepared for the strange, pleasant feelings that bubbled forth each time she looked at him. (But given her past reactions to him and Alice, perhaps she should have been.) "She gets excited."

Renesmee nodded sunnily. "I'm homeschooled, so I never get to meet new people. Especially not important people like you."

"All people are important," Sadie said by reflex, though her mind was elsewhere. Were they...talking about her, at the Cullen house? Their little sister had called her "important" and referenced her reneging on the mall trip.... "It's nice to meet you, Renesmee."

Then Alice entered, carrying an armful of fancy dresses. "Good news: I brought the mall to you!" she announced.

Sadie boggled. Tens of formal gowns were draped over Alice's arms, piled neatly but doubtless too heavy for her to be holding them so effortlessly. What an unexpected work-around to the whole "not going to the mall" thing. "Did you _buy_ all of those?"

"Oh, don't worry about it." Alice managed to wave her hand dismissively, despite her load.

Jasper stepped inside and closed the door. Sadie wasn't sure what it was, but she found that her friends had an especially thick aura of intrigue about them today; she found her gaze oscillating between the two of them with curiosity, even though _Renesmee_ was the new factor here. "How has your morning been?" he asked.

"Any luck finding Brillig?" Renesmee asked.

"Nessie," Alice cautioned.

"No, it's fine," Sadie said. So they _were_ talking about her at the Cullen house. Even her lost dog had come up in conversation. It was strange to think about, and it reawakened the conspiracy theorist part of her that worried she was being inducted into something. "I haven't found him yet. And no one's contacted me saying they've seen him." The longer she went with no leads, the more worried she became. It would be different, if he'd gotten lost in the park or something; then she'd have a place to return to, a place to leave water and something with her scent, so that he could hopefully find his way back. But no, he had vanished from inside the house. She didn't even understand how he'd gotten out in the first place; many a time, she'd stopped mid-task (washing dishes or finishing homework) with some new idea of a place in the house where he could have gotten stuck. Maybe he was behind the washing machine, or between the water heater and the wall. But nothing. That was the most worrisome part: not knowing if she was wasting her time, checking outside at all. If she was being stupid, thinking he could have escaped the house without opposable thumbs.

"Don't lose hope," Jasper said, and it was as though someone had physically lifted the weight on Sadie's mood. "I'm sure he'll turn up."

 _Again_. Sadie eyed Jasper. _Again_ , the unpleasant feelings that she understood were being supplanted by pleasant ones she did not understand, and it was always around Alice and Jasper. _Is that...something they can do?_

Okay, pleasantries, then questions.

"Do you want to sit those down somewhere?" she asked Alice. "They look heavy."

"Oh, I was thinking I could just take them up to your room," Alice replied. "So you can try them on."

Sadie almost replied, _All of them?!_ , but then she caught herself and quickly remembered that it was entirely up to her, what she did or did not try on. "I will try on three," she said sternly, to avoid setting the precedent that she was a Barbie doll. "And warn me next time."

"Yes, ma'am," Alice said cheerfully.

"You can drop them off in the living room, for now," Sadie added. "And you can meet my mom there." Then, she turned to Renesmee. She hadn't planned for them to be bringing their younger sister along, but that was hardly the little girl's fault. "Would you like to watch a movie or something? I have some Disney movies on DVD; you can watch them on the big TV, if you want. Or if not, I still have a lot of books from when I was your age; have you ever read The Hobbit?"

Renesmee's eyes lit up. "No, I haven't!" Then she paused and said, "But I want to see you try on the dresses, too. I want to do both!"

"Well then, you can read before and after," Alice suggested.

Sadie led them into the living room, where her mom was still reading.

...

Sadie's mother looked like her. She had the same complexion, similar eyes (though, of course, hers were older, with slight crinkles at the outer corners), and noticeable similarities in frame and stature and the way she carried herself. The shape of her jaw, mouth, ears, and hands differed considerably; Jasper supposed Sadie took after her father more, where those were concerned. But she looked enough like Sadie that Jasper was now able to objectively state that his seeing Sadie as beautiful was not just a byproduct of her being their mate. Because Dr. Gilder was not their mate, and she was also beautiful.

(The thought briefly crossed Jasper's head that, if they didn't turn Sadie, it was likely that she would age beautifully. She would probably get crinkles at the outer corners of her eyes and things like that. But he quickly smothered the observation, glad that Edward was not here to hear it. He wouldn't dare imagine such things until Sadie was safely turned. Letting her stay vulnerable for that long...that was not an option.)

Despite the visual similarities, Jasper found that the flavor profile of Dr. Gilder's emotions was so unlike Sadie's that it was almost startling. They shared the cool, minty undercurrent of analysis, but where in Sadie it was mild, accompanying every emotion but never overpowering it (only ever giving a healthy amount of definition to the various tastes, fascinating and surprising Jasper's senses all the while; Sadie's emotions tasted of mint in the exact right amount), in Dr. Gilder it warped every other taste, dulled and numbed all of the stronger feelings, except for her love for her family. Her love for her family was not mint-free, but it wasn't dulled by it like everything else was. It also wasn't sweet and nectary like Sadie's love was; in Dr. Gilder, love was a more robust taste. Sturdy, and savory.

Interesting. She would be a challenge. Not enough of her emotions were loose; all either firm and unmovable (except perhaps by that Volturi witch, Chelsea) or laden with minty overthinking.

Dr. Gilder sat up, slipping a bookmark into her book and setting it on a side table. Her gaze slid to watch Alice set her armful of dresses down on the furniture, then returned to their faces. "You must be Alice and Jasper," she said, rising from her chair. Her voice was similar to Sadie's, too. Not as expressive, though. Fittingly enough. She offered her hand to shake, and Alice took it, smiling in that way that always endeared people to her. In Dr. Gilder, though, the smile seemed to alter her feelings toward Alice very little.

A challenge indeed. Jasper tried gently adding fondness...and found the feeling instantly drenched in mint. A similar response time to Sadie (who nearly always noticed and analyzed her changes in emotion), but far more austere in the response itself. It seemed Dr. Gilder did not let people into her heart lightly.

Well, Jasper had that in common with her. _But,_ he thought, a bit pettily, _I love Sadie more than she does._

"It's wonderful to meet you," Alice said. "Sadie mentions you so often. You have a lovely home. Oh! This is our sister, Nessie."

"Hi," Nessie said, and she inspired a greater positive response than Alice had (likely owing to her youth), but still not much.

"I didn't know you were bringing your sister," Dr. Gilder said mildly. "Sadie, did you know they were bringing their sister?"

"I didn't," Sadie replied.

"It was a last minute thing," Alice said apologetically. "Someone had to look after her, and it ended up being us." Technically true.

"Well, I hope she won't be bored," Dr. Gilder said.

"Sadie's going to let me read The Hobbit," Nessie chimed in. "When she's not trying on the dresses."

"I was just about to ask about the dresses." Sadie's mother eyed the pile of formalwear pointedly. "What's up with these?"

"For ring dance," Alice said. "They're new; Sadie agreed to try on three. Since she couldn't come to the mall with us."

A ripple of several feelings at once ran through Dr. Gilder: confusion, disapproval, amusement, and things too warped by mint to properly identify. But all she said was, "If that's okay with you, Sadie. Was the intention just that she try them on, or were you thinking that she would keep one?"

She talked like Sadie did. Jasper found a corner of his mouth rising.

"We're leaving that up to her," Alice half-sang.

Sadie and Dr. Gilder shared a look, and Jasper found his territorial side resenting that someone else was communicating privately with their Sadie, on some level that they couldn't entirely understand. Sadie's relationships with other people were making it hard not to kidnap her, but he rebuked himself with the reminder that kidnapping her would have problematic consequences, then consoled himself with the reminder that her relationships were not _entirely_ out of his reach. Even just by adding his own imperceptible influence to her friends' and family's emotions, changing things in ways that wouldn't noticeably manifest in their outward behavior, he was participating in what they shared, just enough to keep it bearable.

"Can you please try on the dresses now?" Alice asked Sadie. "The suspense is killing me. Jazz can get to know your mother, in the meantime."

Dr. Gilder raised her eyebrows, seeming momentarily resistant (likely to the fact that Alice had just laid claim to her time without asking), but she dismissed the feeling before he could smooth it over. Her gaze moved to Jasper, and he could feel the utter neutrality of her evaluation of him. Well, he had worked with less.

"Okay," Sadie said. "I guess now's as good a time as any."

"That's the spirit," Alice said, winking.

...

"Choose three, then!" Alice said.

Sadie selected three dresses at random: a sparkly blue one, a champagne pink one, and a dark green one. She tried to surreptitiously eye the tags, but the prices on all of them had been colored over with black marker. Oh dear. Something to hide? That just made it so much worse. Alice and Jasper hadn't _splurged_ for this, had they? She considered instructing Alice not to do that anymore, but she couldn't tell them how to spend their money, could she? How presumptuous would that be?

She carried the dresses up into her room.

Alice made an excited squeak noise, behind her. "Oh, your room is gorgeous! And these..." She gestured at the sketches and watercolor paintings that Sadie had taped to her walls. "Did you draw these yourself?"

"Yeah," Sadie said sheepishly, and she tried not to preen too much as Alice gushed over each one in turn.

"Tape is bad for the wall plaster," Renesmee piped up, once Alice was done. "Grandma told me."

"Yeah, it is," Sadie agreed, procuring her copy of The Hobbit from her bookshelf, now that Renesmee had reminded her of her presence, and handing it to the girl, "but people can't really see the difference."

"Grandma can," Renesmee said proudly. (The present tense interested Sadie for a moment, before she reasoned that it was none of her business if Renesmee was still in contact with her biological grandmother, or whether she was referring to Dr. Cullen's or Mrs. Cullen's mother.) The young girl took the book from Sadie's hands like it was a family heirloom and ran her fingers over the cover. It seemed she was a real book lover, as she took a second to marvel at it before she held it to her chest and said, "So, are you gonna try on the dresses, now?"

"Sure. Go wait in the hallway while I change."

She tried on the sparkly one first. It was tight, but malleable. It fell all the way to her ankles and fit itself to her curves like a sleeve, with a swooping neckline that wasn't indecent per se but allowed more of a breeze over the top of her bosom than she, with her many t-shirts, was used to. It was pretty. Maybe too well-fitted at the tummy, in that she felt irrationally compelled to suck in, but she wouldn't make her own slight body image issues the dress's fault. It looked pretty. It fit her well. She looked pretty in it.

The sparkles, though. She was not fond of the way they felt against her skin- all scratchy, abrasive. She noticed it whenever she moved, and it made her want to rip it off.

Sadie stepped out of the room with her nose wrinkled, as a nonverbal signal that the dress was a no-go, but Alice's face lit up when she saw her in it, anyway, so Sadie verbally stated, "Not this one."

"Oh, but you look stunning," Alice said. There was a slight whining sound to her compliment, as though she was half-begging Sadie not to discard the dress. "You look heavenly, Sadie-"

“I don't find the material very comfortable,” Sadie said, by way of explanation.

“Comfortable,” Alice echoed, with a determined look, as though such a word was inscrutable but she would riddle it out if it was the last thing she did. She didn’t _say_ anything like ‘There’s that word again’, but it seemed to be part of the sentiment. “I guess I forgot that human skin could be so sensitive.”

“I mean, that’s a slightly weird way to phrase it, but yeah.” Sadie furrowed her brow a little, then asked, “You would tell me if you were a fantasy creature of some kind, right?”

Alice’s small smile grew, and in a trilling voice, she answered, “Not today we wouldn’t.”

Sadie blinked a few times at the even stranger response. This wasn’t exactly outside of the scope of what friends would normally joke about, but the Cullens were already odd, and she _was_ the same person who had made contingency plans for Weeping Angels and Koh the Face Stealer and unexpected time travel to unfriendly periods and… _Wow, I should really read some memoirs or something- diversify my taste._ Essentially, she wasn’t above taking this conversation a little seriously. “Okay, um…why not?”

“Because today we have plans.” Stated in a most sensible tone, as though it were obvious.

“Well, when would you tell me? If you were fantasy creatures?”

“At exactly the right time.”

Sadie’s heartbeat sped up, and she was almost expecting the growing-familiar blanket of calm to sweep over her, but this time it didn't. She made a mental note of this, for later analysis, but didn't try to understand it now.

“The right time, based on what?” she asked.

"Intuition," Alice said simply.

The Simpsons 'I'm in danger' meme passed through Sadie's mind, but she was in this deep and she doubted she would be exempt from weird goings on if she were to now say 'Actually, friendship cancelled; I wasn't aware that there would be this much Stuff and I'm really not down for that'. "Alright. When would you tell me if you _weren't_ a fantasy creature?"

"If I weren't, I probably would have already told you."

Sadie saw no signs that Alice was joking. She groaned, "Oh, _fun_." She didn't honestly mind the idea of fantasy creatures being real, but _which_ kind of fantasy creature was some pretty crucial information for them to be withholding.

Alice giggled a little, then shook at her arm impatiently. "Come on, try on the next dress!"

Sadie relented, ushering Alice gently out of the room again. This time, she tried out the pink dress. It was shorter (about knee length) and girlish; the top section was silk, and strapless, while below the waist it greatly resembled a tutu. It wasn't uncomfortable, but then, she was wearing a normal bra at the moment; for the dance, she would have to wear a strapless.

She must have evaluated herself in the mirror for too long, because shortly Alice was tapping at the door, begging to see.

Sadie let her in (and Renesmee behind her, who was reading but quickly shut her book to see the dress), and Alice's expression immediately turned awestruck. "Oh, you look so beautiful! Please tell me this one is comfortable."

"It feels fine, but I'd have to wear a strapless bra, wouldn't I?"

"Yes. If you don't own one, we can go get you measured right now-"

"I own one," Sadie assured her, choosing to ignore for now that Alice was apparently ready to drive her someplace to not only buy a bra, but get _measured_ for a bra. (Was that something people did? Were there friends who went out and got measured for bras together? Or went on group outings where one of them got measured for bras and the others just...No, this was weird, right?) "I just don't like wearing it. Feels weird."

Alice's eyes were alight with determination. "It seems you are privy to a whole host of sensations that I am not sensitive enough to perceive. That will be an interesting challenge. What sorts of things usually bother you?"

"Do you want to write this down?" Sadie asked, half-joking and half actually wondering.

"Don't need to," Alice said simply. "Go ahead."

...

Sadie listed off a few qualities that tended to turn her off certain clothes.

It was a devastating list, but hopefully "glitter against the skin" wouldn't be an issue once she turned.

Alice's mind easily saved all the information, and she managed to forego the reflex to "fast-forward"- to see the end of the sentence just a few seconds early so that she could have time to check the futures of various responses. She never had to think about how often she used her power until she had to stop doing it; checking the future now, with Nessie so near, would just give her a headache.

But that was the sacrifice she'd opted to make; with Nessie here, Jasper could be shown how Sadie had looked in the dresses without making Sadie uncomfortable. Sadie, Alice had seen, would not agree to having a boy in her room (and yes, she had also seen that the eventuality when it would be revealed that Jasper had been in her room every night, as had Alice, would need to be approached with great care), nor would she feel comfortable going downstairs to model the dresses for Jasper, with or without her mom present. With Nessie here, they got the combined benefits of Nessie's power, freedom from Nessie's pleas to meet Sadie, and Sadie's favorable feelings toward them for bringing along their "younger sister".

It just meant that Alice had to keep her head in the present for a little while.

And make sure that Nessie didn't say anything weird.

And make sure she herself didn't say anything weird. Or do anything weird. For example, hearing Sadie's voice made Alice want to wrap her arms around her, as tightly as she could without breaking her. And watching Nessie look at Sadie, seeing Nessie here in the room where she and Jasper and Sadie curled up each night (not that Sadie knew about that), made her want to hide her mate away, despite the fact that looking at Sadie was the main reason Nessie was here. Usually, it was easier to ignore these kinds of feelings, because she would automatically show herself futures in which she let herself indulge in them, and those futures were rarely good. But now, it was just down to her self-control, and when Nessie ran her fingertips over the voluminous skirt of Sadie's dress, Alice was startled to find that she barely bit back a hiss.

 _It's just Nessie_ , she reminded herself, forcefully. She had been dressing this child for three years, now, and had brushed her hair far more times than Bella had- nearly as many times as Rosalie had. They weren't as close as they could be, because she blocked Alice's visions, but there was still a great deal of love between them. _That's your niece. Relax._

Still, she gently maneuvered Nessie away from Sadie. On an instinctive level, it was repugnant to let strange hybrid creatures touch what was hers.

"Try on the next one," she urged Sadie.

Sadie gestured for her to leave the room, and Alice complied, though it made venom burn the back of her throat to be separated. That, too, would be better once Sadie was a vampire; then, she wouldn't be so fragile, so...edible. And everything in Alice wouldn't be screaming at her to protect and claim and _keep_. (She had seen a future where she explained these feelings wrong, and from it she knew that Sadie would absolutely detest being talked about like she was a possession.)

Alice listened (past the sound of pages turning; Renesmee was not good at pretending she couldn't read twice as fast as a human child.) for the sounds of changing clothes to slow and cease. (Waiting was ridiculous; how did normal people manage it?!) At the same time, she counted Sadie's breaths; she was halfway through her thirty-seventh when Alice knocked again.

"Come in," Sadie allowed, and Alice did, with alacrity.

The fact that Sadie had chosen the dresses at random and the fact that Nessie was here meant that Alice was experiencing the sight of Sadie in each dress for the first time _in person_ , instead of a few moments or minutes or hours before. But this alone was not the only reason she swooned at the sight of Sadie in the pine-green dress... _The "pine-green dress"!_ Normally, she could only have referred to the garment in the most accurate terms, using the designer's name and the dimensions and features and certainly a more legitimate color descriptor than "pine", but at the moment her mind- her _entire_ mind -was too busy ringing with Sadie's name, Sadie's shape, Sadie's posture, Sadie's face, her arms, her legs, her lips, her neck, her ears, her chin, her hair, her hands, her skin, her eyes, to catalogue such insignificant details as the minutiae of the dress she was wearing.

And how wonderfully she wore it! This dress gripped Sadie in much the same way the glittery one had, but it was strapless on one side (asymmetrical; Alice's vocabulary was starting to gradually return, though "asymmetrical" was really the most basic word to forget), giving her an elegant sort of getting-undressed-at-the-end-of-the-day look. The fit of the dress and that one bare shoulder (for Sadie had pulled down her bra strap on that side, presumably to see how the dress _would_ look) seemed impossibly alluring.

Were it physically possible for Alice to tear up, she might have then. Her love and her lust were so strong, in that moment, that she heard Jasper give a slight gasp, downstairs.

"So, this one feels fine," Sadie volunteered. She was looking at Alice with a furrowed brow and curiosity in her eyes. (What a privilege, to have Sadie's curiosity.) "Should I take your speechlessness as a sign that you like it, or a sign that you hate it?"

Alice forced herself to speak, but what came out was a somewhat-shrill, "Hate...?! I could never...!" She had never been so ineloquent. Never in her life. But then, she had had time to prepare for meeting Jasper. Time to make her introduction smooth, and to not be flustered.

"Well, that's good, I guess."

"She's speechless because you're so pretty," Renesmee contributed. Alice happened to know that Bella had warned her daughter not to get in the way too much, but it seemed that she had deemed this the right time to speak up.

And good thing, too; Alice was bombing. "What she said," she agreed, pointing her thumb at her niece.

"Thank you both, then," Sadie said, her expression flattered and pleased but not surprised; she knew that she was beautiful. Good; it would have been ridiculous for her not to, and it saved time when she already knew things.

"You really look like a goddess," Alice said, to make up for her own lapse in perspicacity.

Sadie winced. "Oh, don't say that." And she withdrew into her attached bathroom, to change out of the dress.

Right! Alice belatedly remembered that Edward had mentioned, albeit dryly and in passing (He was so frustratingly tight-lipped about Sadie's thoughts, even though Jasper _knew_ that he was impressed with her. But no, he withheld information about their mate even though Alice never had, when Bella was human.) that one of Sadie's more pessimistic theories about them was that they were trying to induct her into a cult. So of course, using religious-sounding verbiage to describe her would be unwelcome. Alice would have seen that, if she were able to look ahead. Her feelings about Nessie being here had just started to sour again, when...

"Are you really not going to try anything else on?" Nessie asked. Bless Nessie. Bless her. Because Alice knew that it would seem pushy if _she_ wheedled for Sadie to try on more dresses.

"No, I don't think I will," Sadie said lightly, emerging again in her regular clothes. "Three is enough. I wasn't mentally prepared to play dress-up today."

"I'm always mentally prepared to play dress-up," Nessie giggled. "Are you going to wear the green dress to the dance?"

"I don't know what I'll do."

"Ready for us?" Alice whispered, too quietly for Sadie to hear.

"Not quite done," Jasper whispered back. "A few minutes more."

"I don't want to encroach on Alice's generosity," Sadie continued.

"Oh, think nothing of it," Alice said, taking Sadie's hands in hers. ( _Careful, careful. Don't bruise her like that first time._ ) "I can't think of a better use of our money, truly."

Sadie eyed her suspiciously.

"I promise we're not a cult." She tapped Nessie on the shoulder, gestured at a desk chair at the far side of the room, and felt a small bit of relief when her niece obediently moved several feet away and resumed reading her book. Now she could see bits of the immediate future, only as far ahead as Nessie would stay over there, but it was enough to see the issues Sadie would raise next. "We aren't buying you things with the expectation that you'll do anything in return, and we won't demand any gifts back from you if-" (She soldiered through the unthinkable.) "-you don't...return our feelings...at all." But that just wasn't going to happen, was all. Sadie didn't have to know it, but there was no version of events where they parted ways and lived separate lives over something as fickle as human feelings. Alice didn't have to see the distant future to know that much.

"Well, thank you for telling me that," Sadie said. "I still think maybe it wouldn't be a good idea for me to keep the dress."

"We still have a little time before ring dance," Alice said coyly. "Maybe you'll change your mind."

"It seems like you're really invested in having me wear this. Why is that?"

Alice paused. Thank goodness she had sent Nessie to the other side of the room; there was no way she would have phrased this well without checking a few results ahead of time. "It makes me happy to give you things..." ( _And I want you to wear it where everyone can see, like leaving my fingerprints all over you-_ No.) "...and it makes me happy to know that I helped you to look that stunning."

Sadie's curious expression softened. An unearthly beauty, she was, in or out of the dress. Alice threw herself into any and every future where they kissed, touched, anything. Whatever the result or the context, she just needed to see it. Filled her mind with it, to tide herself over.

"That should do it," Jasper murmured, downstairs. So his conversation with Dr. Gilder had gone well. "Come back to me, now."

Oh, good!

"Let's go back downstairs to Jasper," Alice suggested, hooking her arm through Sadie's. "Come along, Nessie." She stretched out her other hand to beckon her niece over.

"This book is so good, I'm sad to stop reading," Nessie said earnestly, even as she followed them out of the room. The last images of those enticing futures winked out, with her proximity.

Sadie slipped out of Alice's grasp to turn and close the bedroom door behind them. "Oh, you can bring it home with you, if you want. And just have Alice or Jasper give it back to me once you're finished." Their mate was so generous, and so casual in her generosity; it came so naturally to her. Alice wanted to buy her so many things. Wanted to spoil her until she stopped even noticing it, stopped thinking, even for a moment, that she was encroaching on anyone's generosity. She also wanted to hold her in her arms, hold her off the ground, keep her safe, stow her away...

"Thank you so, so much!" Nessie gushed. "I've never read anything so magical. Mom only reads _serious_ books by people even older than my dad."

"She sounds like Bella," Sadie remarked.

Nessie froze, with an expression as though she'd messed up somehow. "Huh?" she said.

"Bella once said that she didn't like Lewis Carroll much because she finds his writing too silly," Sadie elaborated. Her lovely, dark eyes narrowed just slightly- that endearing expression she always got when she was noticing something. "She must take after your mom, in that regard."

Nessie's whole body slackened with relief. "Oh, yeah. She takes after...our mom."

Sadie smiled encouragingly (So kind, with such perfect lips, Alice was going to combust.), then walked ahead of them. (Alice thought about linking their arms again, but refrained; this was a welcome opportunity to look at Sadie from an under-explored angle.) "Well, I'm glad you like the book."

"I like hobbits. I wish they were real."

For a moment, a few different factors converged. 

Nessie, who had been beside Alice at first, came to be in front of her as they approached the stairs. 

At the same moment, Alice spotted that the carpet Sadie was walking on was loose. 

Sadie stumbled on the loose carpet. 

Alice tried to push past Renesmee, but when their skin made contact, her senses were overwhelmed by her niece's imagining of hobbits, in their underground homes. (Renesmee's power, the reason they had brought her here, working against them as she used it inadvertently.)

When their skin broke contact, the intruding images vanished, and Sadie was suspended mid-stumble with Jasper's hands on her arms.

Jasper, who had been in the kitchen a second ago.

His eyes were wide with panic, his hold probably too tight. But Alice was ecstatic to see him, saving their mate, who would otherwise have been at the mercy of gravity, which was so indifferent, so cruel, couldn't Esme attest to how much it hurt to fall...

"Whoa," Sadie said, which Alice couldn't help deeming an under-reaction. "I, uh..." She glanced around at all of them, at their likely frantic-looking faces. "The carpet's been loose, here, for years. It's no problem; I always catch myself on the railing."

Jasper exhaled, loosening his grip on Sadie, and calm filled the room. But not enough to salve Alice's terror that something as innocuous as a carpet could have really hurt or killed their Sadie, and still could any time she wasn't cautious enough, going down the stairs in her _own house_. How many times had they been at risk of losing her, before they'd even met her? How many times would she use these stairs before being turned? They would have to do something, have to have Esme make some alterations, something. Something. This place couldn't just keep being a death trap! "You can never be too careful," Jasper breathed. He met Alice's gaze, and she could see that he was sharing in her terror.

...

Even once her heart beat had calmed down, Sadie didn't address the elephant in the room until she and her friends had the living room to themselves. Renesmee and Sadie's mother were both in the kitchen, reading their respective books. Sadie sat on the living room sofa, with her legs curled under herself, facing Alice and Jasper at the sofa's other end.

An early 2000's romcom was playing on the TV, but none of them were watching.

"So," she started. "I don't expect to face much resistance in saying that Jasper moved to catch me at a speed most people can't reach."

"That's a fair assessment," Alice said, her voice taut. She and Jasper had seemed tense ever since the incident on the stairs. When Alice had gone to collect all the dresses and return them to her car, she had looked at Sadie with such a grave expression that she'd half-wondered if the house was going to catch fire while Alice was gone, and Jasper had hovered close to her all the while. Now, Alice leaned against Jasper, as if for emotional support, and his arm was draped around her petit shoulders. Both of them were stiff and statuesque, with stony expressions. Was it because she had seen how fast Jasper could run?

"What's wrong?" she asked them, and two astonished gazes met her uncomprehending one.

"Sadie, you almost fell," Alice said.

Oh.

Really?

 _I just stumbled a little; it happens._ But she didn't want to downplay their concerns. "Were you...worried that I would be hurt?"

"Of course! You're...Humans are so fragile."

She felt a chill run up her spine. Calm followed closely after. "And you're not?" she gathered. That had been the implication, after all. "You're faster, and..." (Her arms ached a bit from Jasper's "rescue".) "Are you stronger?"

"We're certainly not bothered by glitter against the skin," Alice said succinctly. Not quite an answer.

"So you're faster and stronger?" Sadie repeated.

"Yes."

Okay. So she couldn't know _what_ they were (if they really were anything but human, which was seeming more and more likely), but she was allowed to know characteristics. That seemed an extremely exploitable loophole, but she would tread slowly. "Okay. Fast. Strong. Cold, except Renesmee and Jacob..."

"You can just call her Nessie; everyone does except Bella."

"She introduced herself as Renesmee," Sadie said with a shrug.

"Only because she considers you family. With strangers, she calls herself Nessie because her real name is too memorable."

"What's wrong with being memorable?"

Alice paused, grimaced, and then said, "I think a different line of questioning would be for the best."

"Okay." Sadie decided on her next line of questioning. "Can you see the future?"

"Sometimes," Alice said. "That's just me, though; no one else in the family can do that."

Sadie blinked, not having expected a straightforward "yes" to that one. "I..."

"It's fine if you need to process it," Alice said, cracking a smile. "No one's expecting you to take everything perfectly in stride."

"So that _is_ what you meant when you said that you saw me before you saw me?"

"Yes. The day before we met at school, I saw that we would meet you. And I saw that you were special to us."

"In what way?" Sadie asked. Her heart was racing. But she was calm. Calm. Why was she calm? "Just that you both want to date me or something?"

Alice paused. Exchanged a look with Jasper. Then she looked at Sadie again with a reassuring smile. "It's a little more complicated for us," she said, "but you don't have to worry about that now."

"I _am_ worried about it," she said. But no, she wasn't worried. She had expected to be worried, but really she was calm. Very calm. More calm than she had been in a while. What was there really to worry about? When it came down to it, she was perfectly safe. She was here with her friends who cared about her, and she was safe. They wouldn't even let her stumble on her own stairs; she was so safe with them. And she knew that it was odd that she was feeling this way, but at least it was a good feeling. She could question it later. For now, she just wanted to feel good.

They watched the movie in silence, for a while. Or, she watched the movie. Even in her state of serenity, she could feel that her friends were watching her instead of the screen. The characters in the movie bantered, and Sadie allowed her mind to wander. She had experienced the odd bouts of unexplained calm around Alice and Jasper, but she felt it was safe to classify this as a new development; her natural concerns and quandaries had never been subdued to quite this degree.

She sank back against the throw pillows and let herself be at peace with the weirdness. So, they were extremely fast and apparently strong (She wasn't sure exactly how strong; "stronger" was relative). So, Alice could sometimes see the future, which she would definitely have more questions about, by the start of school on Monday at _least_. She wasn't going to lose her head about all this. She had seen what she'd seen, learned what she'd learned, and now she was watching a movie.

Alice got up, skittered over to Sadie's other side, and sat back down. Jasper slid closer to both of them. She was between the two of them, now. Alice's arms wrapped around her midriff, Jasper's around her shoulders, similar to the way he'd been holding Alice moments ago. Well, they were just watching a movie. Later on, she knew that she would find this _lull_ that she was in now astonishing and maybe even disturbing, which...

Which...

Knowing that, it seemed she should...

Sadie blinked, increasingly aware of how weird this was. She couldn't quite make it to discomfort, let alone dismay, but her eyes oscillated between Alice on her right and Jasper on her left like one of those creepy owl clocks. Knowing that she would have reservations about this later was enough to make her listen to her own wary thoughts now (similar to how she had used to avoid being scared of monsters in the dark, when she was ten, by reminding herself that she wouldn't be scared of the closet or that weird reflection in the hallway once the light was on).

She took a deep breath. Both of them smelled like flowers. Not a perfume-like scent, but nevertheless a strong one. "So..." Concerns. What were her concerns? "You can see the future. And no one else in your family can."

"Correct," Alice said. Hearing her speak just reinforced her awareness of how close they were sitting.

"What's that like? You said you see the future _sometimes_. What are the limitations?"

Jasper chuckled. _Wow_ , she was close to him, too! Almost in his lap! She couldn't feel nervous about it, and she honestly didn't want to feel nervous about it (because feeling nervous was unpleasant), but it was still quite a discovery. Had she ever sat this close to anyone, other than her parents? She was inclined to doubt it.

"What's so funny?" Sadie asked.

"You," Jasper said gently. (His breath was cool against her temple. Colder than it seemed it should have been.)

Alice lightly squeezed Sadie's hand, to regain her attention. "I can choose to see the future whenever I want to, provided there's no interference."

"Interference?"

Alice nodded but didn't elaborate.

"Deliberately cryptic. Okay. I think I have more questions..."

A melodic hum from Alice. "We both love how curious you are, and how observant you are. For right now, though, can you please trust that we'll tell you everything at exactly the right time?"

What, and just let it go?

She could do that. For now. She could treat herself by indulging in the unnatural feeling, just this once. If it happened again, though, she would be sure to put forth more resistance.

They watched the rest of the movie without changing position. They had just started on the next movie (a sort of steampunk action adventure, jarringly different in tone from the previous) when Alice's phone suddenly vibrated. She groaned as she read the screen. "It's Edward."

Jasper let out an exasperated huff, which amusingly caused him to resemble a normal teenager more than ever. "What does he want?"

"They want Nessie back home."

"Me?" Renesmee called from the kitchen. An impressive feat, given the low volume at which they had been speaking.

"Yes," Alice called back, more sensibly loud. (Sadie added "enhanced senses?" to her mental list.)

With slow movements, as if reluctance was physically weighing them down, Alice and Jasper released Sadie and rose to usher Renesmee (now traipsing out of the kitchen) toward the door.

"We'll see you later, Sadie," Alice promised. "Thank you so much for having us!"

"You said I can take the book home, right?" Renesmee said.

"Right," Sadie agreed.

Jasper and Alice all but dragged Renesmee out the door, suddenly in such a hurry to leave.

Sadie and her mother walked the Cullens out; they always walked guests out, at least to the porch. Alice and Jasper and Renesmee descended the porch steps with more grace than one would expect. (Certainly more grace than was necessary.) As they climbed into the car, the serene haze that had been hanging over Sadie slipped away. Its absence didn't cause Sadie's anxiety to redouble or make up for lost time, as she had worried it might; instead, she was left feeling vaguely confused as the Cullens pulled away and vanished around the corner.

"He's a delightful young man," her mother opined, and Sadie nearly gave herself a crick in the neck swiveling around so fast. "They both seem great."

Sadie gaped at her mother, who had never found any of her friends delightful or great. Dr. Gilder had never _hated_ Sadie's friends or anything, but there had always been a divide of formality; her friends could seem nice, or seem smart, or seem polite, but that was as far as Dr. Gilder was normally willing to go in describing the character of people she barely knew. She _certainly_ was conservative about such strong personal judgements as "delightful".

It was silly, but she felt cool dread course through her. _Mom is compromised,_ she thought, and there was only a sliver of jest in it. She had known that letting Alice and Jasper visit her house might be crossing a new line, but she hadn't imagined that they were capable of inspiring such a positive response in her mother. And she knew it didn't mean _that_ much; her mother would never side with strangers over her, no matter how delightful she found them, so raising any kind of alarm would still be effectual. But still, it was creepy. What could Jasper possibly have said or done?

...

"Aunt Alice and Uncle Jasper are hardly ever home anymore," Nessie moped.

She had been dropped off at the Cullen house minutes ago; her aunt and uncle had deposited her on the door step and then promptly returned to their car and driven away. Now, she was sitting between her mother's knees, as Bella attempted to recreate a hairstyle Nessie had shown her. It was Edward, however, who answered her:

"That's just what it's like when vampires meet their mate," he said, sitting down next to his daughter and placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. "When I first met your mother, I was home a lot less, too."

"You must have been home a little bit," Nessie said, with a slight smile. "Aunt Rose said you were insufferable."

"Did she, now?" Edward said, with a playful glare in the direction of the main garage (where Rosalie was currently working).

"Yes," Nessie giggled.

Bella made a quiet, frustrated sound, undid the braid she was working on, and started again.

"Aunt Alice and Uncle Jasper will be back to normal once they've gotten used to everything," Edward finished, with a consoling glance in Bella's direction.

"When will Aunt Sadie come live here, too?"

Edward grimaced. "You don't have to call her 'aunt'."

"Sadie will come around at her own pace," Esme called from the kitchen. "And we mustn't rush her. A marvelous thing about vampires is that we can wait forever for the ones we love."

"Forever?" Nessie groaned.

"Yes, and then we get to _spend_ forever _with_ them."

Edward sighed, though he knew that Esme's heart, as always, was in the right place. She treated it as a certainty that Sadie would become a vampire, but she would never think of turning someone against their will; she simply believed, and believed fully, that things would work out in the end. That no matter how many detours or setbacks appeared, eventually Sadie would love Alice and Jasper as much as they loved her and she would agree to do away with her mortality for the sake of that love. Edward supposed that he had little cause for skepticism; thus far, their family had a perfect record of things working out that oughtn't have. Perhaps that was _why_ he was so skeptical.

Though, his detailed knowledge of exactly how protective and obsessive Jasper was (even by vampire standards), and how impatient Alice tended to be with delayed gratification, certainly helped.

"Uncle Jake isn't home a lot, either," Nessie observed.

Edward had known that she would bring it up; she'd been thinking about it for a while.

"Sometimes, when grown ups disagree, they need space from each other for a little while," Bella said. She was making a great deal of headway on Nessie's hair. Learning fast. "Uncle Jake finds it a little harder to be around Aunt Alice and Uncle Jasper right now, and they find it a little harder to be around him, so they're giving each other space. Okay?" Bella was also a fairly quick study in how to talk to children; she had picked up, from Esme and Rosalie and Carlisle, that unhappy topics could be explained with frequent use of words like "a little" and "sometimes", and more emphasis on things being _difficult_ than unpleasant.

"When Aunt Alice and Uncle Jasper are back to normal, and Sadie moves in, will Uncle Jake be back to normal, too?"

"Uncle Jake was never normal," Bella teased.

In fact, Jacob would probably be back to haunting this house sooner than Alice and Jasper would. The fact that everything he planned was a blind spot to Alice meant that he could get things done quickly without alerting her, so long as he didn't think of his plans in relation to Sadie or allow his plans to cross paths with theirs in some other way. It also meant that Edward could help out a bit, so long as he didn't allow his future to disappear to a suspicious degree; blank spots made sense, seeing as Jacob was a part of the family and they spent time with him, but too much blankness and Alice would suspect that something was afoot.

But then, she would be suspecting things were afoot soon enough, regardless.

...

It was hardly two minutes after Alice and Jasper had left that Sadie's mom ambled into her bedroom and said, "There's someone asking for you, at the front door."

And indeed, there was. Standing, arms crossed, on their front porch was a young woman (about the age of a college student) in a tank top and cutoff shorts. Her hair was chin-length, her skin brown, her face positively beauteous, her body lean and strong-looking.

"Hi," the young woman said, kind of briskly. "I'm Leah Clearwater. You don't know me, but I'm a friend of Jacob Black."

Well, Sadie could certainly see a resemblance. But not everyone with the same workout regimen was actually acquainted. And even if it were Jacob himself on the doorstep, this would still be pretty strange. "Nice to meet you," she said, regardless. "Can I ask how you knew where I live?"

"Edward told Jacob, who told me."

"Why does _Edward_ know where I live? And why is there a grapevine about my home address at all?"

"I can explain that and a lot more. Would you like to take a walk?"

Every single alarm bell went off at once. Taking a walk with a stranger with this clear a physical advantage might have been the absolute worst idea. "We can't talk here?"

Fortunately, Leah shrugged. "Sure." She glanced around, then continued (as if she found the porch wholly unacceptable), "Can I come in?"

Well. It wasn't like she was home alone. "Yeah. Come on in."

...

Sadie's future suddenly vanished, and Alice stomped down on the breaks so hard, her foot tore through the bottom of the car and into the street below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That last part might be stretching vampire resilience a bit (I feel like she's got to lose a toe or _something_ , doing all that.), but I thought it was cool, so she's just gonna do it without any physical consequences.
> 
> This chapter was harder to write, and I don't know why, but we're nearing the fun stuff again. I know the writing is flawed here, but I wanted to update today, because I know a lot of us are stressed out right now.
> 
> I tried not to overuse the word "beautiful", but I'm not sure I succeeded, lol. 
> 
> So, overthinking your feelings tastes like mint to Jasper. And I'm sure you're wondering why a vampire knows what mint tastes like, but I feel like them not enjoying human food doesn't mean they can't taste it accurately; it just means they can't enjoy the taste. So like, they know what pizza tastes like, it just happens to disgust them. (Side note, I've read a Twilight fic called "Bonds That Bind Us" in which an OC suggests that the Cullens (Jasper especially) chew gum to keep their bloodlust at bay, since it tastes horrible to them. I definitely recommend it. If you do read it, comment for the author!)
> 
> I totally paralleled the Bella car crash thing, with Sadie on the stairs. It's a Twilight staple; I couldn't help myself. And anyway, I feel like Alice and Jasper are both protective enough that they were bound to treat some regular thing as a world-shattering threat at some point, if not repeatedly.
> 
> But I finally got the chapter up! That's exciting!
> 
> Please comment!


	7. The Rule About Boundaries

"I'm going to be as honest and _quick_ as I can about this," Leah started, "since I have it on good authority that Alice and Jasper are on their way back here."

They had settled in the kitchen, since Sadie had offered Leah a bottle of water and Leah had requested that they talk privately, and the kitchen's current emptiness allowed them to kill two birds with one stone. Of course, Sadie's bedroom would have been more private, but it was also much too intimate a place to invite a stranger. Really, she had been pushing it (by her own standards), letting Alice and Renesmee in.

"Why would they be on their way back?" Sadie asked. She had a bottle of water, too, just for the sake of having something to do other than simmer in Leah's odd intensity.

"Because I'm here, and they won't like that. And before I explain anything else, I have to ask you a couple of questions, to be sure we're on the same page. First, how far along are you, as far as noticing the Cullens' weirdness is concerned?"

"I try not to talk about people behind their backs," Sadie said, with an apologetic tone which she herself wouldn't be able to explain, if asked.

Leah made a face as if pained. "Oh, they are just walking all over you, aren't they?"

"What do you mean?" Sadie frowned. A part of her took issue with Leah forming such a quick judgement about her, but the rest of her recognized that there was some (albeit unpleasant) truth to her words. She felt she did a decent job maintaining boundaries, with Jasper and Alice, on an incident-to-incident basis, but overall it was true that they had a way of persuading her to advance things at a faster pace than she would otherwise have chosen.

"You sound like a decent person," Leah said. "And they can exploit the crap out of that. Here's the deal: there are some things that I can tell you _without_ putting you at risk and some things I can't. For example, I can tell you that Edward can read minds."

"He can what?" Sadie said, her heart racing with perhaps the most trivial reaction possible: embarrassment. "What do you mean he can read minds?"

"He can hear people's thoughts. It's how he gave us your address. Well, more accurately, he can't _not_ hear people's thoughts; it's one of his senses, just like hearing what you say out loud."

"Oh, I...I don't like that. I really hope you're lying."

"I'm not. Alice can see the future, Jasper can control people's emotions-"

Sadie drew in a sharp gasp, as her mind began to fit Leah's statement in with what she had already observed in herself. She was already awash with a veritable stew of horror, indignation, and something like betrayal even before the train of thought was fully formed in her conscious mind, but still Leah carried on:

"That's the easy stuff. The Cullens' secret is pretty big, but if I tell you the whole truth about what it is, there is a chance that you will be killed for knowing it. Not by the Cullens, but by others like them. Worst case scenario."

Well, that sounded like case closed, then. But... "And if you don't tell me?"

"That's a bit fuzzier. It's possible you'd still get killed, in a different way. Most likely, though, you'd get your choices taken away from you and wind up knowing anyway, when it's too late. Jake told me that Jasper and Alice are acting patient with you, but they aren't, really."

A chill ran up Sadie's back. On one hand, she had known those two longer than she'd known Leah, but on the other hand, Leah's words were ringing true in a deep, instinctive part of her. _Instinct isn't necessarily insight_ , she reminded herself.

_But it still shouldn't be ignored._

"This sounds like the kind of conversation my parents should be here for."

"If they could make a difference, I would agree. But they aren't a threat to the Cullens or any of their kind. The worst your parents could do is tell more people about them, which would just get more people killed: everyone involved. We don't have much time, though; give me a yes or no on whether you're cool with me telling you the Cullens' secret."

"Can you tell me who or what might kill me for knowing it? And...why I'm even a part of this? I literally just walked into class one day and..." She paused. She was getting close to talking about people behind their backs, but surely this was an exception to the rule.

"You got dragged into this," Leah agreed, with a rueful smile. "I get it. That's why I accepted, when Jacob asked me to fly in. He needed backup, and we're sworn to protect humans. Speaking of..." Leah whipped a cell phone out of her pocket and started typing a mile a minute. "...There. I just started a group chat; now you have Jake's number, and mine, and you can get in contact with us if they cross a line. And they will try."

"But _why_ , though?" Sadie was having trouble keeping calm, with Leah's steady but urgent tone.

"Their kind are obsessive," Leah said. "Technically my kind can be, too, and any other time I could honestly rant up a tree about that, but we at least make a collective effort to treat our mystical love-at-first-sight BS with some decency, now that we know what to expect, and anyway it isn't always romantic for us. For them, well, their kind don't exactly document much of anything, but I haven't heard of a case where their sudden intense bonds with people were platonic or familial."

"So you're not...whatever they are," Sadie gathered, her hands tightening on her water bottle, "but you _are_ something else? Something other than human, I mean?"

"I'm what Jacob is. There's no danger to knowing _our_ secret, but..." Leah checked her watch, then appeared to think something over. "With their foot speed, they should be here soon. Will you just believe me, if I tell you I can transform into a giant wolf, or do we have to go to your backyard for a demonstration? If I demonstrate, I will have to undress, but that's because bras are expensive and I like these jeans. The pockets are real and they fit my hips _and_ waist."

"You can...?!" Sadie cut herself off, remembering that there was apparently a time limit. "Uh...What's...Can you demonstrate by transforming just a part of yourself? Your hand into a paw, or something?"

"I've never done that before. Cool idea to try later, though, if I ever need to clock somebody without stripping down." Leah stood up. "Come on; let's go to the backyard. If you learn anything by the end of this conversation, it should be that you aren't crazy."

"If we don't have time, then..." Sadie followed, despite her words; knowing that she wasn't crazy would be nice. (Otherwise, there would always be a part of her that felt a little stupid for taking any of this information at face value, no matter how many strange things had happened.) But she also didn't want any sort of confrontation to happen in or around her house.

"No worries; the boys will hold them off long enough for me to prove magic is real."

...

There were three teenage boys lingering casually on the sidewalk when Alice and Jasper arrived at the Gilder house. Jacob stood in the middle, with his arms crossed and his gaze defiant; Embry stood on one side, tossing a hacky sack from hand to hand and eyeing the vamps warily; and Seth stood on Jacob's other side, smiling serenely.

"Hi guys," Seth greeted them. "Jake said you've been having trouble keeping your cool, so a few of us flew in to help. It's just like when Nathan imprinted and we all had to help _him_ chill out. The ones with imprints couldn't come, though, for obvious-"

"Seth," Jacob sighed.

"Shutting up," Seth said.

"What are you doing here?" Jasper demanded.

"This is crossing the line," Alice said. "No one is to go to Sadie's house! No one!"

"I'll take 'cognitive dissonance' for 200," Embry muttered, but at that same moment, Jasper sniffed the air and noticed another scent trail, almost overpowered by the other three werewolves, leading _into_ the house.

"Leah," he growled, and Jacob quickly moved into his path and interjected:

"If your plan is to make a scene in front of Sadie, then by all means. You know the three of us will just follow you in, on four legs if we gotta."

He was being glared at with the force of a thousand suns by two pairs of amber eyes, but the fact that he had their attention meant that they weren't yet bursting into the house to either attack Leah or procure Sadie. No, Jasper wouldn't take such a gamble lightly. Not with Sadie so close.

"You know why I had to invite them," Jacob continued, more calmly.

"Because you're trying to come between us," Jasper said, through his teeth. It was unclear whether it was intentional or not, but his sleeves were rolled up to reveal the scars of battles he'd won over the decades. His glower was flat and cold as he regarded Jacob, his fury pouring into the atmosphere so thickly that less experienced werewolves would have phased on the spot. "You want to slow us down, get in our way, keep Sadie from us."

"We just want to help protect the human," Embry said.

"From us?" Alice demanded. "We would never hurt Sadie. We would kill anything that tried to hurt Sadie."

"Or anything that keeps us from turning her when it comes time," Jasper added forebodingly.

"Okay, direct verbal threat on our lives," Embry observed.

"They _are_ like Nathan," Seth said, sounding uneasy.

"This is the long and short of it: you guys were overpowering Sadie and talking over me in the family meeting, so I recruited some backup to advocate for her," Jacob said reasonably. "If you really love her, you'll see this as a good thing. Helping to keep that mate obsession to a minimum."

"What do you know about loving Sadie?" Jasper spat.

"Carlisle will put a stop to this, when he finds out," Alice said. "You used the family's money to fly your wolves in, didn't you?"

"Well, I am part of the family."

"That doesn't mean you're allowed to get in our way. You-" She fell abruptly silent, at the sound of Sadie's back door opening. The five of them were out front, not visible to Sadie or Leah as the two of them proceeded into the backyard. Still, they could hear Leah already saying:

"From the smell of it, I'd say they're here. Let's get this over with."

There was the sound of a zipper, and Jasper's face went wild with rage as he growled out, "No!" and vaulted the fence dividing the front yard and the back, Alice close behind and all three werewolves close behind her. 

...

Jasper's feet touched the grassy ground just as Leah's transformation was complete, and Sadie gawked both at the sudden appearance of multiple visitors in her backyard (via _jumping the fence_ ) and at the giant gray wolf who had taken on a defensive stance between them.

"Get away from her!" Jasper coldly demanded at the wolf who had just been Leah.

Leah merely rumbled at Jasper, and Sadie backed away several feet until her back contacted the fence to her neighbors' yard. Her heart was thundering. Leah had proven that she could transform into a wolf- a bigger one than Sadie had been imagining -and now Jasper and Alice and Jacob were here, along with two very serious-looking strangers, and she had to process it all _right now_ , so that she could react, and it was like her mind was swallowing too big a bite.

"You can't be mad at Leah for telling _our_ secret," Jacob said, moving to stand between Leah and Jasper. Facing Jasper, as if he were more of a threat to Leah than the other way around. "She never told yours-"

"That still wasn't her decision," Jasper said fiercely, and it was strange to worry for Jacob's safety when he was so big and strong-looking, but Sadie certainly was beginning to, in the face of Jasper's cold rage. "Sadie isn't hers, she's _ours_. We decide when she knows things."

Sadie's eyes went wide, her skin went hot, and her heartbeat stuttered for a second. As if Jasper's words weren't enough, Alice and the two strangers who Jacob had brought started staring at her immediately after, as if trying to catch her reaction, but how was she supposed to react to something like that? Jasper was still glaring at Leah, as if he didn't find his own statement strange enough to disrupt his focus, and Leah was still standing her ground, and Jacob was still managing that altercation, and suddenly Sadie felt manifestly aware that she was _part of this._ She was _in this_. There were unexplained, seemingly magical occurrences happening in her backyard, and she wasn't just _present_ ; she was irretrievably _involved._ All of the things Leah had said about Jasper and Alice floated to the front of her mind, and in that moment Sadie felt actual fear.

Immediately, Jasper's gaze snapped up to her, and she withered back a bit, flush though she already was with the fence. She did not enjoy being looked at with this kind of intensity. Jasper started towards her, as if Leah didn't exist anymore, as if nothing in the world existed anymore, but Alice quickly took his hand, and he stopped. Sadie could not have been more relieved that he stopped.

She was suddenly glad that Edward wasn't here; she didn't swear, as a rule, but at the moment her thoughts were _only_ a string of frantic profanities.

Everyone was staring at her, except Leah, whose focus remained on Jasper. (Probably smart of her.)

Sadie cleared her throat, clapped her hands together awkwardly, and said, in a much-too-shaky voice, "I'll be honest: I think this whole situation could have gone better." A pretty weak understatement, to be sure, but it wasn't in her nature to be bombastic; she could only be as truthful as she could manage to be without falling to pieces. "Definitely not a very fun encounter for any of us; I'm sure we're all in agreement there."

Both Jasper and Alice stood still as statues, unblinking, and for some reason Sadie couldn't help thinking that if they moved at all, it would be to run and grab her. (She was not fond of these little guesses she kept making.)

Jacob's friends were looking at her like she was recently deceased or otherwise uniquely pitiable, which was no better; it only aggravated the feeling that she was becoming trapped by these incomprehensible supernatural happenings.

Jacob himself had his eyebrows raised, apparently curious as to how she would handle all of this.

 _What a coincidence; I'm curious, myself._ "Um...I think it's safe to say that none of us are at our best right now," Sadie continued, pursuing the path that she hoped would most quickly result in her being alone and free to bury her face in her pillow and shut out everything until her brain was properly caught up. "We're all pretty tense and...defensive. How's about we as a group agree to put these last five minutes behind us, part ways, and come back refreshed and ready to hash this out peacefully at a later date. See you guys at school?"

She wanted everyone to immediately agree and excuse themselves, but instead her words seemed to have had the opposite effect; suddenly, Alice was directly in front of her with both hands on her shoulders, having crossed the yard as a speed Sadie's eyes couldn't even track.

"Just don't let them change your opinion of us, okay?" Alice's tone was sweet and lilting and pleading and tragic. "You're so smart; you wouldn't let them come between us, right?"

It was funny, almost, that she was being cornered both physically and mentally. She felt a sudden and blatantly untimely swell of affection for Alice, but her eyes went suspiciously to Jasper, and she remembered Leah's words, and all of these people looking at her so seriously were too much, and she needed to be _alone_.

"I just need some rest, okay?" she told Alice. The other girl's hands were so _cold_. "I'll talk to you on Monday. At school, Monday."

"Let's give her some space," Jacob suggested.

Like flipping a light switch, Alice's expression turned hostile as she looked at him. Sadie had never seen her look so unfriendly. "We won't leave her until you dogs do."

"Leah still has to change back and get dressed," Sadie pointed out, her eyes finding where Leah had dropped her bra in the grass. "She can't leave here as a wolf."

"Then we'll wait for her to change back. But we're not leaving you here alone with _them._ "

"Is Leah okay with you watching her get dressed?"

Everyone, including the large gray wolf, looked at Sadie with astonishment (of different kinds; Jacob's astonishment, for example, seemed amused, whereas Alice's seemed to be laced with adoration), and it managed to lessen the tension a bit, to have all of them united in their disbelief.

"There's a wolf in your backyard and you're concerned about her modesty?" Alice said. Her cold hands slid down Sadie's arms. "You're much too kind, love. Much too kind."

"That's what Leah said," Sadie noted. "Kind of."

Leah shifted back to her human form, completely nude. "Seth, toss me my pants. We'll continue this conversation at the bl-...At _their_ house."

"Good catch," one of Jacob's friends teased, while the other (evidently Seth) helped to collect Leah's outerwear from around the yard while she was getting dressed in her underwear. Everyone afforded Leah the courtesy of averting their eyes, except Jasper, who still seemed to view her as an imminent threat.

"The wolves never approve of anything," Alice simpered at Sadie. "You don't have to mind them; they don't understand how things work for us. But like I said, I can see the future- when _they're_ not in the way, that is."

"So they're the interference you were talking about," Sadie gathered, weakly.

"Them and Nessie."

"Wait, you mean Nessie _can't_ turn into a wolf? But..." Sadie's mind was close to short-circuiting. "But she's...warm-blooded."

"Yeah, she's a whole separate thing," one of Jacob's friends chimed in, and that was apparently the last straw; Sadie's brain straight up blue-screened, and she defeatedly said:

"Oh. Okay."

"We'll leave you to process all this," Leah said. "Text us if you need to."

"If she needs anything, she can text _us_ ," Alice said curtly. Then she smiled at Sadie. "We mustn't let them come between us. We _mustn't._ " She released Sadie's arms, and drew away.

Jasper was staring at Sadie hard, even after Alice had taken his hand and started leading him toward the fence, so Sadie shut her eyes for several seconds. She took a few deep breaths, reminding herself that this wasn't the end of the world, whatever else it was. By the time she opened her eyes, she was the only one in the backyard.

...

"Why did the exciting things happen _after_ I left?" Nessie groaned, but her words got lost in all the arguing.

The wolves were all standing together, in their section of the living room, and Alice and Jasper were directly facing them, a few feet away. Rosalie and Emmett stood on neither side, Carlisle stood in the middle, and Bella had backed Renesmee into a corner and stood in front of her, with Edward in front of them both.

"Alright," Carlisle said, and with a gesture of his hands, the noise died down. "From the sounds of it, we've strayed from the family meeting system and started directly intervening, which we try to avoid, Jacob."

"They don't _own_ Sadie," Jacob replied. "If she agrees to talk to us, then we're allowed to talk to her."

"But you weren't just talking about something like homework, were you?" Esme said gently, entering the room from the kitchen with four dishes of food balanced on her arms. Seth and Jacob each took one straightaway; Leah and Embry refrained, and Esme left their plates on the table before going to stand with Rosalie and Emmett. "You were telling her secrets."

" _Our_ secrets," Jacob said. "And Edward's, but he agreed it was fine."

"You don't ask Edward; you ask us," Alice snapped.

"What _exactly_ did you say to her?" Jasper asked Leah. Though Alice had been holding him back, in front of Sadie, now his expression seemed deceptively calm...though in conjunction with the way he stood completely still, it had more of an eerie effect than anything. He was putting unsettlement and disease into the atmosphere, to make the wolves fear him. It was working...on Seth.

"Nothing worse than what you said in front of her," Leah said, with a mocking smile.

"Tell us _exactly_."

"I don't have perfect recall, tick. Let's see. I told her that I couldn't tell your whole secret, or someone else might kill her for knowing it-"

Already, Alice was hissing. "Give her nightmares, why don't you!"

A slight sneer curled Leah's lip. "Right, I forgot you two were so invested in her sleeping through the night."

"She never has to fear the Volturi," Jasper said. "We'll just have to make that clear to her on Monday. What else?"

"Oh, I told her Edward can read minds, I told her about your little mood trick-"

Jasper's hiss cut through the air- he started to advance on the wolves, but Carlisle quickly held a quelling hand in front of his chest -and Esme tutted sadly: "Oh, Leah, you really shouldn't meddle that way..."

"Really?" Leah said. "We should give him free rein to control her mood without her consent?"

"I've been telling him not to," Edward muttered.

"I have only her best interest-"

Leah swiftly interrupted Jasper: "I don't know why we're pulling punches here. Weren't you a Confederate soldier?"

Jasper stilled.

"A major, I think," Jacob contributed.

"Wait, really?" Embry said. "So, when you found out slavery was outlawed, were you like ' _Aw, man!_ '?"

"That's not the point, and _don't you dare_ mention it to Sadie," Alice said.

"I feel like that _is_ the point now," Embry argued. "Are you still, like...racist?"

"I wasn't in it for the slavery," Jasper said, with less steel than his voice had possessed before. He averted his eyes.

"But you didn't mind the slavery," Leah needled.

"Never mind that; it was a long time ago," Alice said, rubbing Jasper's arm comfortingly.

"I hadn't thought about it," Jasper confessed quietly. "I don't like thinking about it. I don't like imagining Sadie in such a time."

"Did you care, before you met Sadie?" Leah asked, crossing her arms.

"I hadn't thought about it," he said again, even more quietly.

"But now he is," Alice emphasized. "And just because you can dredge up something from his very long past doesn't mean you're in the right for telling Sadie so much information prematurely. And again, if you tell Sadie about his past before we do, I will _kill_ you."

"Well," Carlisle cut in, "whether or not you approve of their methods, can you agree that their intentions were good?"

"No," Alice said stubbornly.

"Weren't they trying to help Sadie? Because I can't think what else they stood to gain from involving themselves."

Alice's lips pulled into a brief pout. "Even if they had good intentions, that doesn't change the fact that they've blown holes in the future."

"But you've gotten used to driving blind, right Alice?" Rosalie asked quietly. "With Jacob and Nessie being part of the family."

"Speaking of driving, I think Alice's car will need some TLC, Rose," Edward put in.

"Not the Porsche," Seth bemoaned.

"It's not about what the wolves stood to gain," Jasper interjected. "They were trying to disrupt our footing. Whatever their reasons, they were acting in malice."

"I'm sure Sadie sees it differently," Edward said.

"Well, we wouldn't know, since you refuse to tell us how Sadie sees _anything_."

"I know you think that I'm denying you information because of some sense of superiority," Edward sighed. "I know you think that I believe you less capable of courting a human than I am. That isn't true; I'm sure that you are both very capable, and I know that you love Sadie no less than I love Bella. But as someone who has courted a human before and now has the benefit of hindsight, I know that it is very easy to take liberties that should not be allowed, and I can see you both doing it now. We're all just trying to help you avoid doing something you'll regret."

Jasper's hostility towards Edward abated, though it was not replaced with friendliness. His tone was measured when he spoke again: "I believe that _you_ care about what we will regret. But the wolves you've allied yourself with do not. Leah, for example, reacted to your words with disdain."

"As we keep saying, we're here to protect Sadie," Leah said, "and I'm not here to coddle you about it. You've already been overstepping, and you only just met her this week."

"In the interest of honoring the 'family meeting' system," Jacob said, "I'll say this now: I'd like to station Seth, Leah, and Embry in Sadie's neighborhood every night, to make sure no one breaks into her room."

Carlisle winced. "That's..."

"Absolutely not!" Alice exclaimed.

"If you're worried about anything happening to her, we can make sure nothing does," Jacob insisted. "Meanwhile, we can also make sure you two don't cross any lines."

"I won't be able to see!"

"Now, let us consider..." Carlisle attempted, but he made no effort to continue when the voices rose over his own.

"You wolves tire; we don't! And you don't care for her like we do; you won't be nearly as reliable."

"It's our job to protect humans," Jacob said. "If you want to know that she's safe and you don't want to be giant creeps, this makes the most sense."

"Then you overestimate our trust for werewolves," Jasper said.

"Jasper," Esme chastised quietly, and Jasper's tense posture did relax, marginally.

"They aren't as good for her as we are, Mom," he said more calmly, and Edward glared at him. It wasn't that they _never_ called Esme "mom", but Jasper was doing it now for the express purpose of maintaining support for his argument. "She should be with the people who love her."

"And you know that it would kill us to be away from her all night," Alice said. "Especially if I can't even see her in my visions. What they're suggesting...Would we _only_ see her at school, then?! We'd be so restless!"

"More restless than usual?" Embry joked, and Jacob elbowed him, and he punched at Jacob's elbow, both of them grinning.

"You see?! They think this is funny!"

Jasper was quick to exploit the wolves' joking tone, as well: "They say they have heroic motives, but really they're just here to amuse themselves, like they always do."

"'Like we always do'?" Leah repeated. "And here I thought we saved your ungrateful, glittery-"

"Leah," Jacob cut her off, and she glared at him.

"We appreciate all of your help over the years," Carlisle assured her. "Jasper and Alice are just upset."

"But you all indulge them."

Jasper's lips curled into a mirthless smile. "You know, come to think of it, Leah is probably acting more out of _spite_ than amusement."

"Don't," Edward warned him, but Jasper continued:

"Just because she can never be loved or in love, she has to ruin it for us."

"Dude!" Seth exclaimed, taking steps forward toward Jasper. Jacob gripped his shirt, though his jaw was tight and he had his own death glare on Jasper. Embry nearly went on the offensive, too, but Carlisle intercepted him.

Leah didn't move from her spot. In fact, she let out a breathy laugh, then whipped out her phone and started rapidly typing into it.

"What are you doing?" Jasper asked, suddenly on guard and ready to run and crush her phone if he had to. (But then, maybe she was just summoning a cab to take her someplace else; that would be ideal, he thought.)

"You don't know what spite is, bloodsucker," Leah said, a sharp smile on her face.

 _"What are you doing?!"_ The sound of several text messages being sent spurred Jasper into motion; he ran at Leah, dodging Carlisle's arm and crashing into Edward, dodging Edward's restraining limbs and suddenly finding himself being thrown to the other side of the room by Emmett.

When he landed, Alice was already at his side, checking him over for cracks or breaks. He could feel that he was intact, so he quickly sat up, just in time to see Leah hand Jacob her cell phone and saunter out of the house, Seth following after her like a particularly nervous bodyguard. "We'll be on four legs if you need us," she said, and Jacob merely nodded, his eyes scanning her cell phone screen.

Jasper was on his feet in the blink of an eye. "What did she do?" he demanded.

...

Sadie was just getting out of the tub (after a very long, hot bath to get her mind back in order) when a string of text messages started to light up her phone screen, all from Leah.

_Lock ur window_

_Put bells on all windows and doors_

_Make them answer ur questions_

_Ask them about ur dog_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment! I love all your comments, and they help me stay motivated to write.
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading.


	8. The Rule About Making Promises You Can't Keep

After a Sunday spent emboldening herself and bulking up her mind muscles, Sadie awoke on Monday morning ready for the whole truth.

The whole _entire_ truth, possible death notwithstanding.

She put on a pair of combat boots instead of her usual sneakers and applied a bit of dark eye makeup, to let her brain know that she was aiming to be pretty hardcore today. She deliberately changed her mind multiple times, when choosing her outfit; she suspected that the reason Jacob had advised her to do that, when they'd first met, was something to do with Alice's visions. (It wasn't too much of a longshot, that psychic visions might be decision-based. In fact, if they were based on _anything_ , it ought to be decisions.) She settled on one of the few all-black outfits she owned; it matched the boots.

Maybe it was presumptuous to assume that Alice might predict what outfit she would wear and then go out of her way to match it, but Sadie was amenable to being presumptuous today.

Because every single one of Leah's texts was concerning, to say the least. She hadn't made a single accusation against anyone, which was almost more ominous: the urgent, instructive tone, as if she had been typing as fast as she could. Typing out the essentials of survival, or something.

And the little voice of doubt and skepticism that had stuck around in Sadie's mind before was gone, now- gone, ever since Leah had turned into a giant wolf in her back yard. This was happening. She was not gullible; this was really happening. So now she had to learn what _exactly_ "this" was, and whether she should tell her parents about it. And whether the Cullens knew something about Brillig's disappearance, and what non-creepy answer there could possibly be to that question.

She scrambled an egg, turned on the coffee pot for her parents, even remembered to take a multivitamin.

She had already asked her mother, yesterday, if she could be dropped off earlier than usual, and so she was.

When she arrived at school, Alice and Jasper were waiting for her out front, both matching her in all black.

So, failed experiment, then. Or a successful experiment, in which she'd simply discovered that she was wrong. Sadie took a deep breath, as she gathered her backpack and lunch box and climbed out of the car. She really did not enjoy Alice's seeming omniscience. But she steeled herself; now was the time for questioning them, not doubting herself. She shut the car door.

" _Really_ ," Sadie sighed, as her mom drove off. She didn't go so far as to gesture at the matching outfits, but she figured a single pointed glance made her meaning pretty clear. "Still?"

"You had your mind made up when you picked out the boots," Alice said, with a sunny smile. "Pretending that you'd wear something else only caused a few flickers in the overall image. Cinnamon roll?" She held out a paper bag, as if in offering.

"No thank you," Sadie answered. But she was right about the visions, then. She hadn't done a good enough job convincing herself that she might actually wear anything other than what she actually wanted to wear, but she had been right that decisions caused Alice's visions to change.

"We don't eat human food," Alice wheedled, jiggling the bag a little. "We'd only throw it away."

"That's actually the perfect segue into my questions."

"Yeah, I thought it might be," Alice said, with a grimace. "If we talk in the room the drama club uses as a dressing room, we won't be interrupted or noticed. But you will be late for Psych, pretty much no matter what. Rosalie and Emmett have agreed to cover for us with Johnson, in the interest of giving us time for total honesty."

"It's not an option to just...have this conversation right out in the open, and lower our voices to avoid being overheard?" Sadie asked. Seeing Alice and Jasper acting completely normal only made the events of Saturday feel more bizarre, and the thought of willingly hiding away in a distant corner of the school with them seemed like the sort of thing Leah and common sense would advise against. She remembered seeing Jasper face down against a giant wolf, snarling that she, Sadie, _belonged_ to him and Alice, and a small shiver went up her spine. She couldn't even make eye contact with him, standing there all tall and meek like that hadn't happened.

"It's going to be a long conversation," Alice said gently, "and if we have it in the middle of the hallway, or here outside the school, we'll be interrupted by faculty. If we have it during lunch, our siblings will insist on butting in with extra information-"

"I like extra information."

"Yes, but you'll also want time to...react to what we say." Alice looked slightly nervous. "You're not going to like some of it. That's why we bought you a pastry, to kind of warm you up. And it's why Jasper isn't using his power on you; if he did, you would be...indignant."

"Yes, I would," Sadie agreed, slightly tense at the implication that he _had_ , in fact, been using his mood control powers on her in the past. She had guessed as much, but the confirmation had been much too casual. "But I don't like to be late for class."

"You want us to tell you everything, right?" Alice reached for her hand tentatively, and Sadie eventually took it.

Ice cold.

Alice smiled, seemingly thrilled to have Sadie's concession. She led Sadie briskly through the hallway (not as crowded as usual, given the time), with Jasper close behind, and she chattered all the while: "We know that Leah texted you, Saturday night. We can explain all of that, too. I know it must have been nerve-racking, to be bombarded like that without context. She only did it because she was angry with us for something unrelated; Jasper made a comment she didn't like, and she decided to take it out on you." They arrived at the door to the dressing room, as she was finishing up her assurances.

"She suggested I ask you about my dog," Sadie said, stalling outside the doorway now that she was here. It really was a secluded room, and there were two of them and only one of her, and they had supernatural abilities. "Do you know more about what happened to Brillig than I do?"

Alice pressed her lips together before qualifying, "What we did...it wasn't out of malice, or selfishness. We were choosing the best outcome for everyone. Brillig is fine, he's just...Nessie is taking care of him for now."

"Alice, did you steal my dog?" Sadie asked, her eyes narrowing.

"The thing is..."

"So, you stole my dog, then. You took him, from my house?"

"Nessie did. Not us personally."

"How old is Renesmee, Alice?" It was supposed to be a rhetorical question, to point out the ridiculousness of putting the blame on the child, but Alice's head tilted, and she replied:

"Now, _that_ is a whole other bullet point..."

"We should have this conversation in private," Jasper said, quietly and, by all appearances, reluctant to remind Sadie of his presence. Even still, he nodded his head in the direction of the dressing room.

Alice took Sadie's hand and began to gently reel her in. At Sadie's noticeable reluctance, she softly crooned, "We would never hurt you, Sadie. You're safe with us."

"Can you describe to me your understanding of the word 'hurt'?" Sadie asked, though Alice was successful in getting her inside the room, and Jasper closed the door behind them, sealing them in definitively where, according to Alice, they would not be interrupted. "Does it cover physical harm and/or pain?"

"Part of our agreement with our family was that Bella would follow at a distance and wait outside this room, to make sure everything stays aboveboard. If we did anything bad, our family would find out."

"That doesn't really answer my question. You said 'complete honesty'." Sadie glanced around the room, uncomfortable with just standing around; Alice and Jasper were standing perfectly still, and it was weird. She grabbed one of the many chairs scattered around the makeup station, turned it towards them, and sat down in it. The other two remained standing; Sadie chose to interpret this sitting-standing dynamic like they were pleading their case to a queen in her throne, because thinking of it any other way would freak her out, and she hadn't even made a dent in her questions list yet.

"Here." Alice placed the bagged cinnamon roll in Sadie's lap. "You can enjoy this while we give a lengthy explanation about what we are and why all of this is happening."

"Did you do anything to it?"

"No. No offense, but...we kind of wouldn't have to."

Super strength, super speed, super powers. Right, what did they need to drug her for? Sadie's heartbeat picked up, but just as quickly, a wave of calm crashed over her. "Jasper," she muttered, managing to meet his gaze for a second.

"I'm sorry; I can't stand feeling your fear."

Sadie took a deep breath: explanation first, then hash out the misuse of powers argument. As it turned out, the cinnamon roll that was now directly under her nose smelled amazing, so she took it out of the paper and took a bite.

And Alice started explaining, rapid-fire:

"If I could just breeze through the major points: We're both vampires. Nessie is half-vampire, half-human. She's Edward and Bella's biological child; she was born while Bella was still human, about three years ago. She grows very quickly, and she will stop growing when she's about seven. Jacob and his friends can shapeshift into wolves, because of some very convoluted spirit magic from their ancestors. They don't grow older as long as they regularly shapeshift, and they call themselves the natural predators of vampires, though I daresay we give as good as we get, when we do fight. Which...Circling back to the vampire thing, we're immortal; we can't sleep; we can't grow; our hearts don't beat; we see, hear, and smell with greater sensitivity and accuracy than humans; we...by which I mean, our family...we drink animal blood instead of human blood as a conscious choice, unlike most vampires, who choose to drink human blood, and that causes them to have red eyes as opposed to our golden eyes. Just being bitten by a vampire causes a human to turn into a vampire, in a two- to three-day process. It's difficult for a vampire to turn a human, though, because once we bite, the taste of human blood makes it hard not to...finish. But it gets easier, the longer a vampire goes without tasting human blood; our record is very good. And we would never drain you, even if we were hungry, because...Okay, well, that's another thing. You see, vampires mate for life, which is to say we mate for eternity, and..."

"Wait," Sadie interrupted. Her general stress over the idea that she was stuck in a room with two vampires had skyrocketed when the word "mate" had first been said, and now Alice had said it twice. But she would not permit her own brain to scramble over this, so she cleared her throat and cobbled together a response: "That...Leah called it...'mystical love-at-first-sight BS'."

"She would," Jasper said quietly. "She's never experienced it."

"I mean, it does sound mystical," Sadie said, "and it does sound like love at first sight." She chose to end the comparison there. "Have you two killed people before?"

Alice kneaded her lips together, but nodded. "When a vampire first turns, it's very hard to control the bloodlust. But we converted to vegetarianism when we could. That's what we call it; vampires who drink animal blood instead of human blood are 'vegetarians'."

"Cute name." Sadie felt nauseated. She glanced balefully at the cinnamon roll. Could she really keep snacking on a frosted treat, knowing that two murderous creatures of the night-

She didn't bother finishing the question in her mind; she took another bite. Why deny herself comforts at a time like this? She didn't cease to be in a room with two besotted vampires if she stopped eating. Refusing to settle her own stomach didn't bring back the people who...who they had...She had to swim on the shallow end of this new information, or else it would overtake her. She still had the whole day ahead of her, and she couldn't ask to be excused from school on account of her classmates being vampires.

"So, you have killed people. Both of you have killed human beings. How many?"

"That's actually pretty tough-"

Sadie rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. "It's tough. Okay. That's...not the best. I don't love that it's tough. If you had to guesstimate, would that be in the double digits?"

"Yes, I'd say I'm in the double digits," Alice answered resolutely. "Less than twenty, I'm almost positive." Jasper acted as if the question had only been directed at her.

"Jasper, should I read into your silence on the subject, at all?" Sadie asked, barely managing to keep her own unease in check. What difference would it make if she ran for the door now, anyway? May as well get all the information.

Alice immediately turned witness for the defense: "To be fair, there was a period of time when he didn't know he could survive on animal blood."

"So, he thought it was either human blood or die of starvation?"

"Oh, it's pretty hard for a vampire to die of starvation; more like, either you get to choose whose blood you take and how quickly, or you lose your mind when someone smells too good, and you end up eating someone in the middle of a crowd and a lot more people have to die a lot more painfully to keep the secret from getting out."

Sadie had to take another deep breath, as her heart fluttered.

Jasper looked pained. "Do you want me to...?"

"No, I'm fine." She focused on the smell of the cinnamon roll (Oh, the wonders of precognition; had Alice known that the pastry would help to keep her centered?) and on the thought of what Alice stood to gain from describing things that way. The idea of massacring a whole crowd of people at once certainly made discreetly murdering individuals here and there seem reasonable; that would be the goal, Sadie thought. To make it seem reasonable. To make her amenable to the fact that they had slipped up and killed some people.

Also, she wouldn't ignore the implication that had slipped in with Alice's mention of "the secret"; that had to be what Leah had been talking about, when she'd said that Sadie might be killed for knowing all of this. If more people found out about vampires, more people had to die. Was she an exception, for being their "mate" (And _that_ was quickly becoming the grossest word in her vocabulary.), or were they already breaking the rules by telling her this? Who was enforcing these rules? Was there, like, a Bureau of Vampire Affairs? A Ministry of Magic, but for vampires?

"Carlisle and Bella and Rosalie are the only ones who have never eaten any humans," Alice continued. "Though Rosalie did kill a few, because...Well, that's her business, but they absolutely deserved it."

Carlisle-the-dad and Bella and Rosalie. Okay. So the rest of them- Edward and Esme-the-mom and _Emmett_ -had all eaten people. But Carlisle and Bella and Rosalie hadn't. Though, Bella had just become a vampire sometime within the past three years, which...Hey, speaking of!

"So the immortality thing." (Alice was already wincing, like this was the stressful part of a familiar movie. Not a good sign at all.) "And the not growing thing. How long have you guys been alive?"

"Remember when I said that I have no memories before 1920?"

Sadie gawked for a second, then threw up her hands and protested, "Oh, _come on!_ I thought that was a joke! I thought you were being whimsical. Are you literally an octogenarian? Wait, no...A cent-...What's the word for someone who's over a hundred?"

"Centenarian," Alice said sheepishly.

"That! Thank you! Jasper, how old are you?"

"Hundred sixty-five, give or take, lost count," Jasper mumbled.

Sadie exclaimed the harshest exclamation she allowed herself, per her rules about cursing; unfortunately, it was "jeez", which was so un-cathartic that she might as well have said nothing at all. "Is that not...really bad? I'm sixteen; do you know that I'm sixteen?"

"Sadie," Alice said, still in that soft, gentle voice. "Our technical age doesn't translate to actual maturity; a vampire who is turned at age six could never achieve the maturity of a ten-year-old or even a seven-year-old, even if they lived for a thousand years; that's why it's against vampire law to turn children." ( _Vampire law; putting a pin in that._ ) "Emotionally, we're both teenagers. And anyway, the way mating works...we can't control it. There's no way for us not to be in love with you, now that we are. We don't have to do anything you're uncomfortable with, but loving you isn't optional."

"Because, love-at-first-sight?" Sadie said. "Or love-at-first- _fore_ sight, I guess."

Alice smiled weakly. (The first bell rung, signifying that they had only a few more minutes before they were late for class.) "You still have two more questions," she noted.

"Yes, I do: Why did you steal my dog, and why did Leah tell me to lock my windows and...and put bells on the doors?"

"Well...Another thing about mating...It's just really hard for vampires to be _away_ from our mates, especially early on. You see how Edward and Bella are still attached at the hip, most of the time, and...I mentioned that we can't sleep...We've visited you a couple of times while we weren't sleeping. That's all. We never did anything; we just visited. And we knew that Brillig would make a fuss if we came in with him there, so we made sure we wouldn't have to...make him quiet down."

Sadie had to stand up. She put her cinnamon roll back in the bag and put the bag on the makeup table, and she paced. Alice and Jasper were still standing so still, not shifting on their feet even a little bit to indicate that they might be getting tired. But then, they probably _weren't_ getting tired, because they couldn't sleep, and that was why they...that was why, while they weren't sleeping... "Are you saying you've been breaking into my house, at night?"

Alice nodded, with a sort of brave disposition as if she was the one who deserved to feel brave under these circumstances. "I am saying that, yes."

"And that you stole my dog because if you hadn't done that...what, you'd have had to eat him?"

"Not eat him," Jasper said. "We would never hunt so close to you. If killing him was necessary to avoid waking you, we would do it bloodlessly."

"So you kidnapped my dog to avoid having to...to choke him out on my bedroom floor, whilst _breaking in_." Sadie recognized that she was only upsetting herself, imagining it, so she halted that train of thought. "I would like my dog back," she said flatly. "And I would like it if you didn't break into my house anymore."

"Can we leave that open for negotiation?" Alice asked.

"The break-ins and the dognapping?"

Alice began to follow Sadie's pacing. "You didn't mind the break-ins; you were asleep for the break-ins. You don't even have to know we're there, and if you just make sure Brillig stays out of your room at night, we can give him back and still visit."

"Why do you think I would be okay with you still visiting?!"

"Because we're going to earn your forgiveness and love," Alice answered frankly. "And because we really don't want to break a promise to you, so we don't want to make promises that we can't keep."

"You mean you _can't_ not break into my house?"

"From the time you leave school in the afternoon to the time you arrive again the next morning is about sixteen hours. As it is, we usually wait eight hours, for you to fall asleep, and even then we count backwards the whole time. I genuinely don't know what we'd do if we had to wait the full time, but I don't think it'd be good. We were doing what we had to do to stay in control of ourselves."

"Well, what did you do this past weekend, when I locked my window?"

"Used the hidden key to get in the front door; you didn't do the bell thing."

Sadie felt momentarily dumbstruck. That wasn't the worst thing that had been said today, but the licentious calm in Alice's tone threw her for a second.

(The late bell rung. Class would be starting soon, after the morning announcements.)

"So, your argument for letting you come in is that I can't keep you out?"

"Our argument is that, though we'll want to obey your rules at first, in order to keep you happy, there will come a point where the need to be near you will outweigh that. At which point, yes, it would be pretty impossible to keep us out."

"What if I did tie bells to the doors?"

"We'd just open them smoothly enough not to disturb the bells."

"What if we installed a security system?"

"I'd know the disarm code as soon as any of you decided on it. And we can move faster than an alarm can beep."

"What if I told my parents, or called the police?"

"Again, with our speed and my foresight, we'll never get caught. And we don't have fingerprints, so-"

"You don't have fingerprints?" Sadie frowned, curious.

Alice dashed over to the wall to flick on every light switch, then dashed back to Sadie to show her the palms of her hands. Jasper did the same. Sadie's frown deepened, as she examined their hands and fingers as closely as she could. The only creases she saw were those at the joints, allowing for bending and movement; the expected minute skin folds were simply not there.

"Wait, do you guys not have pores, either?" Sadie valued personal space (especially from vampire fangs) too much to lean in and examine the skin on their faces, but still she squinted to see if she could spot any tiny holes.

"No, we don't. Every fluid in our bodies is venom-based, so secreting it through the skin would be bad news. We can't cry, either. Our saliva is pretty much the only way our venom can escape, except for...the process of making a half-vampire."

"Jeez," Sadie said again, this time at a whisper.

"Our skin is hard and smooth," Alice summed up, lowering her hands as Jasper followed suit. "And very cold. But no, we can't leave identifiable fingerprints. And even if we did, we don't show up in the system like that."

"I guess you wouldn't, because of the immortality thing," Sadie said thinly.

"You sleep better when we're there," Jasper added, as if he weren't still on the hook for using his power on her while she was _awake_ , let alone asleep. "You sleep more peacefully with us."

"Jasper, you can read people's emotions. Did you saying that make me feel any better?"

"No."

"Alice, did you see that he was going to say that and that it wouldn't make me feel any better?"

"Yes."

"Then _why_ did you let him say it?" Sadie was on the far end of incredulity, now; she was laughing from it. She didn't mean to laugh, because she didn't want them to think that this wasn't wholly unacceptable, but still she found herself sitting back down with her hand across her forehead, letting the incredulous laughs out. Technically, making Alice share the blame for what Jasper had said was in violation of one of Sadie's rules about personal accountability, but she couldn't help thinking this was a special case, all things considered. They _had_ stolen her dog and let her think he was lost. Ah, but was that an acceptable precedent to set, that her rules could be ignored provided the other person did something bad enough? _I'll have to go over my rules again,_ she thought, _and make up some amendments and revisions, now that supernatural powers are a factor to consider. For example, to what extent should I hold myself accountable for my thoughts when I'm around Edward? Thought isn't the same thing as voluntary speech, but if he hears them both the same way, I should make it a priority to be more careful, shouldn't I? But then, thought suppression never works-_

_And I just lost The Game._

Alice gingerly pulled up a chair to sit across from her and took Sadie's free hand into both of her own. "We always want to be honest with you, and we always want you to be comfortable with us. We will yield where we can, but if we think we can't...then we have to tell you that. I don't think we can manage to go every single night without visits. We can manage to stop visiting _every_ night, maybe limit it to Tuesdays, Thursdays, and weekends, and we can stick to what we've been doing and time it for when you're already asleep, but spending those hours without you, every single day, really doesn't seem feasible. We'll be constantly worried that some red-eyed vampire might come across your scent and I won't see it in time."

"I want my dog back. Today."

"Okay." Alice raised Sadie's hand almost all the way to her unbeating heart. "We'll have Nessie bring him back. By the time you're home, he'll already be waiting for you, like he never left."

It did feel significantly better to know that. "What do you do, when you're in my house at night?"

"We...talk to each other, and to you. Really, we just linger nearby and listen to you breathe, mostly."

"Have you been in my bed?"

"...Yes. We have."

"While I was in it?"

"Yes, but we didn't do anything untoward, I promise."

 _Being in my bed while I'm sleeping is already untoward._ Her heart was beating so much faster, knowing all of this. _And they can probably hear it._ Not helping. Imagining them both in her bed while she just slumbered on, none the wiser, was also not helping, and the fact that she now knew that both of them had considerable body counts put a weird flavor on all of it. Like she'd been sleeping on the edge of a cliff and hadn't even known it, not to mention...two powerful creatures of the night were in love with her? Two powerful creatures of the night were nervous that she would take offense to their actions? It was bizarre. What were the mechanics of this whole mating thing, and what did it mean for her? Because as much as they seemed to be metaphorically wringing their hands about her reaction, Alice and Jasper seemed to view it as a foregone conclusion, that they would earn her love.

Like no amount of no's would stop their tireless pursuit for a yes.

Like no rule was inflexible to them.

They were immortal. Would they be at this forever? The prospect of such a future (a future full of clingy vampires constantly asserting themselves into her every routine) was looming, and it filled her with such dread, in the moment before she reined in the thought, that Jasper made a small hiss sound, as if he'd been punctured. No, she had some control over the future, surely. She was in control of her future, because the alternative was unacceptable.

"Bella?" Sadie called, remembering what Alice had said earlier.

A moment's silence, then: "Yes?" Bella responded, through the door.

"Did Edward do this stuff, when you were human?"

A much shorter pause, as if this one was a no-brainer. "Yes, he did. I've never had a dog, but he did sneak into my room. When I found out, he started coming in earlier, while I was awake. We spent every night together, except when he had to go hunt. And those nights, I usually spent having slumber parties with Alice."

Oh, good grief. "Now I want to write a paper about vampire mating and its effect on the individual, but I don't know who I would get to read it. Are there scientific journals for vampires?" And if so, did one have to be a vampire to subscribe to one?

"No, but I'm sure the Volturi w-"

"The Volturi are a separate conversation," Alice said. "But if you want to study our psyche, none of us would mind. You can ask any of us any questions you want."

Oh, practicing Unlicensed Amateur Therapy on a family of immortal vampires...it was unfair how tempting that was. The idea only grew more interesting the more she thought of it. Darnit. Darnit! "Don't think you've ensnared me with the admittedly-tantalizing prospect of studying this weird new topic," she said, pointing a stern finger at Alice and Jasper in turn.

Alice giggled, and something must have shifted, because suddenly both she and Jasper seemed much more relaxed than they had moments ago. Jasper's brow visibly unfurrowed. Had Alice foreseen that they were past the hard part of this conversation, now?

"I will be cross-referencing with your family, at lunch," Sadie warned. "A-and...I might need to...not talk to you guys, until then. I need to think."

"We totally understand," Alice said. "Thank you so much for staying with us through all this."

"We are not done talking about the centenarian thing, or the overuse of your powers, and we haven't even touched on the 'She's ours' moment; I wasn't a fan of that."

"We know," Alice said.

"Sorry about that," Jasper said, which Sadie couldn't help thinking rung pretty hollow, knowing how easily the words had fallen out of him and how long it had taken him to regret saying them.

But there was only so much she could manage at once, and they were already late. "Let's just get to class."

"After you, cockatoo," Alice said sweetly.

Sadie sighed, failing to suppress a smile. She really did like rhyming, and she really did like endearing nicknames. And she wasn't used to holding anger; normally, she let go of anger as quickly as she could, cycling it out to make room for more constructive feelings. But then, usually the thing making her angry was more trivial. "At a distance, French Resistance."

"I love you," Jasper blurted out.

"I appreciate it, but that was not a rhyme worth loving someone over; it made no sense." Sadie chose to ignore how Jasper quietly inhaled as she passed him by, though it made goosebumps rise on her flesh. Surely it couldn't be wise of him to _smell_ her.

Out in the hallway, Bella was standing (Not even leaning against the wall; it was so interesting to see the ordinary things that vampires simply didn't do because they didn't have to.), reading from a well-worn copy of _Much Ado About Nothing_ , which she slipped into her purse when the three of them emerged. "All done?" she said. It was still impossible to read her expression.

"Yeah," Sadie answered. "Thank you for witnessing."

"Thank _you_ ," Bella replied, and before Sadie could ask what for, Bella had withdrawn a different book from her purse: _The Hobbit_. "Renesmee told me to tell you that she read it three times and she loved it. Even more than she loves _The Tale of Two Cities_ , though I consider that heresy." Bella smiled.

"I think Tolkien might take that as a compliment," Sadie said, returning the amicable look. So, Bella was Renesmee's _mother_ , not her sister. "I'm glad she liked it. She can borrow _Fellowship_ any time. I'm... _pretty_ sure Lord of the Rings should be okay for a...three-year-old." Sadie paused, making a hasty effort to think through the entire series in about two seconds.

"I'm sure it's fine; I'll pass the message on to Renesmee," Bella replied.

They walked to Psych together, in silence. At some point, Bella parted ways with them to get to her own class, and Sadie felt slightly unnerved by her absence; she hadn't realized how much more comfortable she was, knowing that she wasn't entirely alone with Jasper and Alice. She heard Jasper shifting uncomfortably, behind her, likely in response to her uneasy feeling.

That was fascinating, too. His power seemed to be empathy, or something like it. She couldn't be sure if it was only _her_ negative feelings that felt unpleasant to him or if everyone's negative feelings did, but either way, it was an intriguing indicator of how empathy wasn't the same thing as compassion; despite feeling other people's feelings, he had killed more people than Alice had (a _lot_ more, if his evasiveness was anything to go on). In fact, maybe his empathy fed a sort of selfishness; if he wanted to feel good feelings, maybe the people he chose to kill were the ones who were unhappy, so that he could keep happy people around him and benefit from a net increase in happiness. If their feelings were his.

Sadie's phone buzzed, just before they reached the classroom door. It was a text from an unknown number. A short one: just a green check mark emoji.

"What's that?" Alice asked, immediately leaning over to see the screen.

Though Sadie didn't say or do anything to stop her, Jasper must have sensed her annoyance, because he gently pulled Alice back.

"It's just a green check mark," Sadie answered.

"That's Edward's number," Alice said. "Were you thinking something insightful?"

"He can hear me from here?" Sadie's hands went to cover her ears, as if doing that would muffle her thoughts. "How long is the range on mind-reading?"

Another text: _It varies depending on how "loud" the environment is, but the more familiar I become with a person's "voice", the better I can hear them at a distance._

"I don't like that," Sadie said. She wondered if vampires had any Magneto helmets lying around.

"Yeah, he should really exercise restraint about using his power," Jasper said, his ironic smirk unmistakably smug. His phone buzzed, too, then, but he ignored it and held the classroom door open for Sadie and Alice. (He hadn't even knocked first. Granted, everyone seemed to be working individually, so there was no disruption to just opening the door without knocking in _this_ instance, but the rules of school etiquette were well-ingrained into Sadie.)

They took their seats and took up their classwork, and Sadie pretended she wasn't hyperaware of the way both of them kept looking at her, all throughout class.

...

"So, you're in the know, now," Emmett said, with a grin. The bell for lunch had rung, and as Sadie gathered up her things, he had been the first to approach her. (Alice and Jasper were making a show of giving her space.) "Someone's taking it well."

"How'd _you_ take it, when you found out?" Sadie asked. She was conscious of the fact that she now knew that Emmett had eaten people, but it was hard to feel threatened; Emmett just seemed so chill. Maybe that made it _more_ eerie, but again, she'd wade through that minefield ( _Mixed metaphor._ ) after school.

"Oh, I woke up like this." He beamed, clearly proud of his joke, and his cheeks dimpled. So, vampires could still have dimples. That was something. In a human-safe whisper, he added, "Rose found me mauled by a bear, and she got Carlisle to turn me. By the time I learned about vampires, I was one."

Sadie suddenly felt a strong urge to sit Emmett down in an armchair and discuss his past in _way_ more detail. She had all but decided that she would respond with something sympathetic like 'So, you didn't get to choose?', but what she found herself instead following up on was, "Mauled by a bear?"

"Oh, yeah."

Gently, she probed, "I hope I'm not being insensitive, but...how was that?"

"Super easy; the bear did all the work."

"You must forgive Emmett," Alice interjected. "He doesn't take anything seriously."

"And you must forgive these two," Emmett said, his amber eyes positively twinkling with mischief. "For the record, I voted for them _not_ to be creepy weirdos about everything, but you can see how that turned out."

"There was a vote?" Sadie asked.

"We've already had two entire family meetings about you. Well, more about them, really. They're the weirdos; you're doing great." He gave her a thumbs up, for emphasis.

Sadie smiled and hefted her backpack.

"Can I carry that for you?" Jasper asked. "It's practically weightless to us, anyway, and there's no reason to strain your back."

"Can you promise that carrying my backpack doesn't have any special significance to you?"

"No. But I can promise not to hold you to the significance I assign to carrying your backpack."

Sadie narrowed her eyes a little, considering. That was a pretty good answer. But also, he had been breaking into her house regularly and would have continued doing so if Leah hadn't clued her in. But also, the backpack was heavy and she didn't like carrying it and she normally wasn't one to, as the idiom went, "cut off her nose to spite her face". Punishing him with refusal would also be punishing herself with labor. But also, it wasn't like she hadn't been about to carry the backpack anyway; she wasn't taking on a new load, just continuing to carry an old one. However, could there be considered a difference between an optional load and an obligatory load?

Emmett cut in: "Well, it has now been five entire seconds, and as a _vampire_ ," (He was so exaggerated in whispering the word and then going back to speaking at a normal volume that it was almost a joke.) "I consider that much too long to be thinking about this, so how about I carry your backpack, and no one has to worry about back strain or the special significance assigned to it?"

"Thanks, Emmett." Sadie nodded absently, and Emmett took up her backpack for her- indeed, like it was weightless. "That's right," she mused as the four of them began their trek to the cafeteria. "You would have to think faster than humans, if you can move faster." She paused, waiting to be refuted, but it seemed she was right. She felt suddenly concerned about _all_ of them. "Boy, it seems like thinking really fast and being physically unable to sleep is not a good combination."

"Believe me, we find other stuff to do."

"Emmett," Alice chastened.

"Even Edward does, now. After a full century of just learning languages and playing the piano really loud."

Jasper snickered, but also chastened, "Emmett."

"Unending stamina, is all I'm saying."

"Was that a series of innuendos?" Sadie asked.

"Yup," said Emmett.

"Cool; just making sure." Sadie thought more on that. She still thought the lack of sleep and the quickness of thought were a recipe for madness, but Emmett's joking had inadvertently given her a new hypothesis, that the obsessive nature of vampire love, which Leah, Alice, and Jasper had all alluded to in their varying ways, might be a product of that. So much uninterrupted time with one's mind, and the constant feedback of their improved senses...it could be that vampires _had_ to have a heightened sense of the significance of their own feelings, or else they would all become depressed.

They arrived at the lunch room and went straight to the Cullen table. It seemed Jacob was back with the group, and back to eating everyone's food. Every eye was on Sadie, as she approached, like they were all waiting for a verdict on the whole revelation.

"In hindsight, I should have known when you said you followed a special diet," she said, and they all laughed (except for Rosalie, though her lips did lift a little). Boy, all of these people could be centuries old, as far as she knew. Edward was a _dad_. But then, that wasn't something an actual teenager _couldn't_ do; despite looking eleven, Renesmee was only three. "If it's all the same to you, can I sit next to the natural predator of vampires, please?"

Jacob cackled.

"Under these circumstances, I would encourage it," Rosalie said.

"Thanks, sis," Jasper muttered.

They made room for her next to Jacob. She sat with his heat on one side and Bella's coldness on the other. Sadie ignored (with some difficulty) Alice's and Jasper's sad expressions, as they sat at their usual section of the table, and she did her best not to feel intimidated by the company she was in. Once again, she'd come for answers and now she was second-guessing herself. In history class, she'd all but convinced herself to walk up to this table saying, _So, none of you were going to tell me that they stole my dog?_

A quiet laugh, from Edward.

Oh! "Also, Edward..."

"Bella can shield you, if you want," Edward said, with a crooked smile. "Then I won't hear your thoughts."

Sadie blinked. "You can shield people's thoughts?"

Bella nodded. Difficult though Bella usually was to read, Sadie was pretty sure she detected pride. "I can defend against all kinds of mental powers, except for Renesmee's."

"Renesmee has one?"

"She can show people her memories."

"And you can't block that?"

"No. But I can block all mind reading, mental torture-"

"Wait, who has mental torture?" Sadie asked, alarmed.

Bella glanced in Alice's direction before lamely replying, "Just some people we know."

Pinning that. "But you can't block Alice's visions?" (A guess, based on the fact that Alice had singled out the wolves and Renesmee, but not Bella, in that regard.)

"No. Nor Jasper's mood control."

Sadie was curious as to how mood control didn't constitute a mental power but projecting memories did, but she was _more_ curious as to why Bella had been the choice of bodyguard, this morning, if her shield ability didn't cover either of the people Sadie had been with.

"We chose Bella because she's a neutral party," Edward explained.

"Neutral in what sense?"

Emmett answered: "Neutral as in, when we were deciding whether or not Jasper and Alice should keep being creepy weirdos, she decided not to weigh in."

"Thanks, bro," Bella said awkwardly.

"No mention it." Emmett just kept grinning.

Sadie took a moment to decide where to even start with this. She still needed to cross-reference with them about all that Alice and Jasper had already told her, and she also wanted to know their ages, their histories, who was enforcing the vampire rules, who in the family had voted _in favor_ of the creepy weirdo stuff, what the Volturi was and why Alice had stopped Bella from talking about it, how many vampires there were in the world, to what degree they were integrated into human society, and what, if anything, determined who got which supernatural power (like the mind-reading and the shield). "Bella, can you cover me?" she asked, and Bella nodded and a moment later said:

"You're covered."

The interrogation began. Sadie learned, broadly, about the amount of vampires, the fact that most of them were nomadic people-eaters, and the history of the Cullen family (from the animal-eating resolve of Carlisle to the acquisitions of each subsequent member and birth of Renesmee). She got, as Jacob put it, "the Cliff notes version"; she knew where and when they had each joined the family, but nothing about their human lives or how they had died (which she could understand being pretty personal, though it meant that her earliest knowledge of Alice and Jasper was that they had joined the family as an already-immortal pair; they hadn't been bitten by Carlisle or punctured by a venom syringe, like the rest of the vampires. They were more like Jacob; they'd joined for the camaraderie, or something.

"And giving birth to a half-vampire is different from turning a child into a vampire," Sadie gathered, "because half-vampires can grow up?"

"Correct," Alice said brightly.

"And you said it's against vampire law to turn children," Sadie continued. "Who makes vampire law, and what happens when people break it?"

"The Volturi make and enforce the laws," Alice answered, and now she sounded a bit _too_ bright. "You don't need to know everything about them right now, though."

"I see." (Sadie discreetly texted Leah, "What's the deal with the Volturi?", and a minute later, she got a paragraph in response. She pocketed her phone, to read the explanation later.)

Lunch ended before Sadie could get all of her questions answered, partially due to the Cullen siblings' tendency to answer questions with little jokes at each other's expense, which inevitably led to banter, which took up a great deal of their Q&A time, but Sadie wasn't annoyed; there was a lot to be learned from the banter, as well: she learned that Bella had smelled uncommonly good to Edward, when she was human ("his singer", was apparently what that was called; pretty terrifying, that that was even a thing), and that vampires and wolves smelled unpleasant to each other (Both smelled good to her.), and that new vampires were so much stronger than regular vampires that Bella had bested Emmett in multiple armwrestling matches, in her first year, and he was still slightly annoyed about it. 

More than that, their joking around made it easier to forget the fact that most of them had killed people, which was good because that was something to unpack later. She collected everyone's phone number, as well as a vague suggestion from Jacob that she should hang out with the wolves sometime, to which she agreed, because they seemed to be on her side in all of this and they didn't eat people.

In art class, there was an actual assignment today, so it wasn't hard to avoid talking to Alice and Jasper.

(She thought, in that time, about what it meant for vampires to mate, with reference to the way the Cullens were all paired up. That Jasper and Alice were evidently polyamorous wasn't a matter of much intrigue; in fact, she herself had always liked the idea of polyamory (in better circumstances). No, the interesting thing was the _way_ they were all paired. The way they fit together. Because either mating caused them to adopt complementary personalities, or mating took their personalities into account beforehand. Emmett and Rosalie, Bella and Edward- even in a non-vampire context, just on paper, their personalities worked well together. Even their powers did, in Edward and Bella's case. So, was vampire mating some sort of precognition built into every vampire, that they would vibe well with a particular person? From the conversation around the table, it sounded like Bella had had a much better time with Edwards intrusions than she, Sadie, was having with Jasper and Alice's; what did that mean? That, on some level, Alice and Jasper wanted to be challenged, and Edward didn't? Not a conclusion she'd settle on, but a thought nonetheless.)

In math class, where there was a brief lesson and then another packet, the silence between them was more uncomfortable. Normally, Sadie didn't mind silence, but the pair's clear agitation kept grabbing her attention.

"Don't come into my room tonight," she finally said.

"We won't," Alice said, like it was a sacrifice straight out of a Greek tragedy and not just the most basic boundary ever.

"Unless you ask us to," Jasper added, and Alice's expression brightened:

"Oh, yes! We're awake all night, so if you ever change your mind, of course we'll come over."

Sadie saw no need to deny them this hypothetical, if it made them feel better. Maybe she was a pushover; she suspected most people would crack down harder. "Is Brillig home?"

"Yes. Nessie brought him during lunch."

"Tomorrow I'll probably have a better handle on the whole mate thing, and on the whole vampires thing; we might talk about it then."

"Looking forward to it," Jasper said.

They were silent again, less uncomfortably so, until the bell rang and she took the bus home.

Brillig _was_ waiting for her, at the house, and it was a great relief. She wished she could have enjoyed it more, though; all the while she was petting Brillig and taking his licks, she kept thinking about how vulnerable this house was to supernatural intrusion. She pushed away the worries long enough to get her homework done, but after that she was forced to dive into the vampire stuff.

She pulled out her phone and read Leah's text:

_Vampire government. Based in Italy. Three leaders, lots of powerful followers. Powers include reading every thought you've ever had, tracking to anyplace on the planet, causing vivid illusions of pain, cutting off all senses, creating and destroying relationships, some kind of siren type thing, etc. Red eyed- they eat humans. Their main thing is maintaining secrecy. Vampires who are too conspicuous around humans get executed. Humans who know too much get executed, unless a vamp can vouch that they're gonna turn soon. Everyone's pretty scared of them. They're really passive aggressive, too._

Sadie laughed, helplessly, at the last sentence. So, they were extremely powerful people-eaters whose "main thing" was that they wanted humans who knew about vampires to not exist... _and_ they were passive aggressive!

...

Eventually, inevitably, night fell.

Sadie drew her curtains shut (paranoid that vampires were standing outside her house, waiting for her to fall asleep), ushered Brillig out of her room (paranoid that vampires would sneak in and hurt him), and buttoned herself into a pair of cozy pajamas. With her makeup off, and her combat boots off, she was done being hardcore. She let herself freak out a little about everything.

The fact that Alice and Jasper were so persistent in their obsession with her, the way the Cullens treated her, and the fact that humans who knew about vampires were expected to either be killed or turned...all of it painted a clear picture: They planned to make her a vampire at some point. At the very least, Alice and Jasper did.

She couldn't even begin to conceptualize what immortality would be like, and that was without the perpetual thirst for human blood, the inability to sleep, the loss of loved ones...

But they were immortal, and she wasn't, and if they were that convinced that they couldn't spend a night away from her, of _course_ they planned to make her immortal.

If she told them that she didn't want to be a vampire, would they listen?

She honestly couldn't imagine they would.

She very nearly decided to tell her parents about the whole thing immediately, but then she remembered: No, if they knew, then they would be in danger, too. And while she was pretty sure they would prefer knowing, if they had all the facts, she wasn't confident that they would take this as seriously as she did; more likely, she would tell them everything and their takeaways would be that the Cullens were stalking her and also lying about being vampires to threaten or gaslight her, and they would get the police involved, and there would be more eyes on this whole situation. Human eyes _and_ Italian vampire eyes. Even if she went into her explanation as lucid and informational as possible, she doubted that they would take it all as fact without having seen what she'd seen.

Sadie discovered that she was pacing again. She plopped down into her desk chair and swiveled around in circles, instead.

Alice and Jasper were obsessive, and powerful. They seemed to want to follow her rules, or at least they deemed it worth pretending to want to follow her rules, but they had made it clear that it wasn't enough- that wanting her would ultimately take precedence over wanting to humor her.

"Oh, jeez. Oh, jeez."

But! There were the wolves, and the wolves were on her side. Surely, they would protect her if it came to that. She would have to follow through on that suggested get-together; she needed to know that there was _something_ stopping Alice and Jasper from just biting her anytime.

Something _besides_ the fact that it would be "hard not to finish".

She got a chill thinking about it. "Hard not to finish". What a horrible thought, that human blood was so tempting to them that one taste could have them slurping her up like a Caprisun-

 _Graphic,_ she scolded herself.

Jeez.

Sadie climbed into bed. She turned off the light and made herself comfortable, in the cool sheets. Brillig was home, and she knew more about the Cullens now; it had been a productive day. There was no need to feel a deep, consuming sense of dread, because she was doing what she was supposed to be doing: getting some rest. If Jasper and Alice did break their promise and come tonight, it wouldn't be to bite her, which meant it wasn't something she couldn't deal with tomorrow. She closed her eyes.

_We'll be constantly worried that some red-eyed vampire might come across your scent and I won't see it in time._

_When a vampire first turns, it's very hard to control the bloodlust. But we converted to vegetarianism when we could._

_Oh, it's pretty hard for a vampire to die of starvation; more like, either you get to choose whose blood you take and how quickly, or you lose your mind when someone smells too good._

She opened her eyes. _Crap._

Sadie went downstairs (stumbling a little on the loose carpet) and made herself some warm milk, then climbed back into bed. The warm milk managed to put her to sleep, but she woke up at 2 in the morning from a nightmare in which she was desperately hiding from red-eyed people.

Her phone buzzed with a text from Alice, as soon as she was awake: _Do you want us to come over? <3_

Sadie buried her face in the cool side of her pillow. She wasn't used to being afraid. Not to the point of nightmares. Normally, her fears were irrational, and she could talk herself out of them by reminding herself that she wouldn't be scared of the idea of some high-voiced kid in a gas mask once she had all the lights on, so there was no point to being scared of it in the dark. But vampires...It didn't sound like anything she did would be a match for them.

_We can move faster than an alarm can beep._

Jeez.

She _would_ like to feel a wave of calm wash over her right about now. To know that nothing would hurt her because no one would let it.

But she wasn't at the point of falling for the creepy weirdo stuff.

 _No thanks,_ she texted back, and pulled the bedcovers over her face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you don't know, "The Game" is just a thing where you're winning as long as you don't think about it. So, if you're conscious of The Game, then you've just lost The Game. And it's an example of how thought suppression doesn't work, similar to the White Bear Experiment.
> 
> Whether the timeline checks out, as far as this taking place three years after the end of Breaking Dawn and emojis being a thing is concerned (and Alice being a centenarian), is something I made the choice not to be too vigilant about, so sorry about that if it bothers you.
> 
> ANYWAY, please comment! Let me know what parts/lines you liked, or what made you think. Thank you guys so much for your enthusiasm around this fic; it really makes it a joy to keep writing.


	9. The Rule About Rules (And Specificity!)

Sadie recognized that she was being a bit petty, but that was alright; she didn't have a rule about pettiness.

She selected four different outfits, in four different colors, the next morning, and she practiced convincing herself that she would wear each one. If Alice's future-sight was precise enough that she could text her as soon as she woke up in the middle of the night, then it was too precise for Sadie's liking. After all, how did it differ from breaking into her house, at that point? When Sadie decided to shower, did that mean Alice could see her naked?

That was a rabbit hole of worry that she didn't need to throw herself into just now, but finding Alice's limits was still at the top of her to-do list.

Since her hypothesis that the visions were decision-based had been given a lot of support, yesterday, she was attacking that aspect of it, now. She had texted Leah, earlier, ' _How does your blocking of Alice's visions work?_ ', but she hadn't gotten an answer. Maybe Leah was asleep.

She decided on a green outfit, all the way to the point of taking the pants off their hanger, before pausing. If they had super speed, then what did it matter how long it took her to choose an outfit? They could get dressed in the time it took her to go down the stairs. Taking a long time to decide wouldn't make a difference. But _not_ deciding...

Sadie put her pants back on the hanger, closed her eyes, and spun around in circles, solely to disorient herself. She felt around until she was holding a hanger, and she got dressed with her eyes still closed. Hung the other outfits back in the closet with her eyes closed, lest her parents be annoyed by the mess. Putting on her shoes would be a little tougher, as there had been four pairs and she would have no way of matching them with her eyes closed, but she didn't care too much about matching her shoes to her shirt. She grabbed the first pair her hands fell on and commenced putting them on, even though she knew from the texture that these were her red shoes and she also knew from the feel of the shirt that it was her lilac one with the-

 _Darn_ it!

 _Thought suppression doesn't work,_ she reminded herself unhelpfully.

She still put on the red shoes, out of spite. She didn't have a rule about spite.

...

Jasper and Alice were both dressed in lilac, with red shoes, when Sadie pulled up in her mother's car.

She sighed, gathering up her backpack and lunchbox. "Bye, Mom."

"Are they bothering you?" Dr. Gilder asked. "You seem exasperated."

Oh, how to answer that question honestly. She had half a mind to suspend her rule about lying, where it concerned supernatural stuff, but her pride wouldn't allow her to forego this opportunity to test her mettle at question-dodging. "My...exasperation...is not a result of any human's actions or behavior. Don't worry about it."

Dr. Gilder accepted this answer. "Well, if there's any way I can help, let me know. Have a nice day."

"Have a good day, Mom." Sadie climbed out of the car and shut the door behind herself, proud of herself for skirting that one.

 _Man, I wish they were woodland faeries instead of vampires; I'm great at this!_ Sadie thought for another second, though, and concluded, _No, I've pretty much already broken all of the faerie rules. I even ate something they gave me._ Darn.

"Good morning," Alice sang as Sadie walked over.

"Good morning." Sweeping a more scrupulous gaze over the mated vampires' outfits, Sadie was vaguely offended by how put together they looked. Even the shades of lilac and red matched her and each other. They looked _good_. "Did I at least make it tough for you, this time?"

"Definitely an improvement on last time," Alice told her, indulgently. "And the eye-closing thing was super cute. Keep tryin', dandelion." She winked.

"I plan to, Gantu. Antagonist from Lilo & Stitch," she added before they could ask. (Of course it didn't overshadow all the other stuff, but Sadie genuinely did find their little rhyming gimmick endearing.) "Can you verbally confirm that you did not visit my house last night, or this morning?"

"We did not visit your house last night or this morning," Alice confirmed primly.

"You wouldn't have had a nightmare if we had been there," Jasper said, his face set in disapproval.

 _I wouldn't have had a nightmare if I weren't now aware of how easy it is for vampires to break into my house,_ Sadie thought. "I'll take the lack of break-ins even if nightmares are a symptom."

"I don't like the idea of you being afraid."

"We brought you another cinnamon roll," Alice said, handing over a paper bag just like yesterday's. "And a gift." (Jasper handed over a white gift bag, with colorful tissue paper inside, concealing its contents.) "Please wait until we get to class to open it. And before you say it, we're not trying to buy your affection; we just like seeing you happy, and a dry Eggo waffle is not a big enough breakfast for a healthy human."

"You're not trying to Hansel and Gretel me, are you?" Sadie asked, taking the proffered bags hesitantly.

"What do you mean?" Jasper asked. Gosh, he needed to blink more; he seemed so intensely fascinated with her.

"Like, fattening me up to eat me," Sadie explained.

"We never, ever plan to eat you," Alice said earnestly.

"Alright, just checking. This would be a pretty roundabout strategy, if you did." Sadie started towards the door, lest they loiter outside forever. "Now, I do think we should talk about...everything."

"Shoot."

"As it currently stands, I think that our friendship is still salvageable. I'm still really not okay with the stalking behavior, but we'll chalk that up to dissonance in moral code on account of our different species, and that's something we can accommodate with communication and the careful setting of boundaries, I think. It's not cool that you _were_ doing all that privacy violating and stuff, but we can just make sure you don't do it anymore. And that way none of us have to run into the problem of whether or not you're able to stay away." Which even the most anti-stalking of the Cullens seemed to agree that they weren't. "I don't see it turning into anything romantic, but-"

"Thank you so much for wanting to keep us in your life," Alice said rapturously.

Sadie just hoped she was right in doing so. Why weren't there classes on this sort of thing? She had only learned about the red flags for unhealthy relationships on the Internet- never in school. And from a purist, context-free standpoint, Alice and Jasper had raised probably half of those red flags in the few days she'd known them. But the whole vampire thing, and their more recent honesty, blurred the line for Sadie. And there was the fact that she didn't want to put herself in a position where her opposition to their antics was so firm and unyielding that their obsession became desperate. Who could imagine what desperation looked like, on vampires? And...and she was also highly susceptible to how liberal they were with compliments and how interesting they were to talk to and how interested they were in her, and yes, they were both nice to look at, and the revelations they'd made about the world of vampires piqued her curiosity. _I think curiosity might be my fatal flaw._ Those weren't the deciding reasons that she was inclined to be forgiving, but they weren't non-factors, either. She hadn't been lying when she'd said that she thought their friendship was salvageable. She didn't lie.

"I get the sense that your future plans involve turning me into a vampire," Sadie said, both because it was prudent to breach the very important topic early on and because she needed, for her own sanity, to attend to more concrete issues than the positively vaporous question of whether she was managing the situation rationally or just being a pushover or a dumb teenager.

"Yes," Jasper agreed, holding the door open for her and Alice. "You're too vulnerable as a human, and neither of us could bear to suffer through your death, even of old age."

"I don't want to be a vampire," Sadie said. She caught Alice and Jasper exchanging a glance, which she immediately didn't like. "And you're absolutely not allowed to turn me against my will." ("Not allowed". As if that could be enforced.)

"We won't," Alice assured. "Well...not unless something happens that makes it impossible for you to give or withhold permission. Like, if you were to get hit by a car, or some other disaster like that, and turning you would save your life, we would do it. It's how most of us became vampires, anyway."

"Do I have any assurance that you won't orchestrate a life or death situation, or through deliberate inaction allow one to happen, for the express purpose of having an excuse to turn me without permission?"

"Clever question," Jasper praised.

" _Such_ a clever question!" Alice gushed. "This is why we're so compatible; you think of these things!"

"You didn't answer," Sadie said warily, her pulse quickening the slightest bit.

"Please don't be afraid," Jasper said tensely.

"How can you possibly expect me not to be afraid? I'm starting negotiations at 'Don't break into my house while I'm sleeping' and 'Don't forcibly change my species without my consent,' and you haven't committed to _either_."

"We didn't break in last night," Alice offered. "And we gave you Brillig back. We really are doing our best; vampires can be really impulsive and obsessive about our mates; we're managing it as best we can. We don't want to hurt you, though; never ever."

"But it's not off the table to arrange a small car crash if I don't budge on the turning thing?" Sadie probed.

"We won't do that," Alice resolved.

Sadie massaged her own forehead and decided to take that as a win, for now.

"I could improve your mood," Jasper said. "You'd feel better if you let me help."

"Thanks, but I don't need mood-altering vampire vibes...MAVVs, for short; I might start actually calling them that. Yeah, I'm calling them MAVVs, now. I don't need MAVVs; _we_ need to draw up some sort of contract or constitution to manage this whole mating thing."

Alice beamed. "I brought fancy paper and my best pens. We can take as much time as you want. We'll do anything in our power to make you comfortable around us; it's just that separation isn't something that's in our power."

"And you're saying that's common for vampires?"

"A lot of vampires are single, but those who mate don't separate."

"That rhymed; was that on purpose?"

A coy giggle. "Jazz told me that whenever we do a cute rhyme, it makes you just a little bit happier. I'll speak in rhyme all day, if it means we get to see you smile."

And sue her, but that was a good answer.

They arrived at Psych class, where the tables had been rearranged in the telltale way that meant they would be working in groups. Rosalie and Emmett were already sitting at a table which had three empty seats; Sadie and Alice and Jasper joined them. (Jasper turned his chair around and sat in it backwards for seemingly no reason other than aesthetic. It was kind of cute.)

"Good morning, guys," Sadie said.

"Morning," Emmett replied.

"From what I heard, you're doing very well," Rosalie said, skipping the greeting altogether. "I would not have chosen immortality, if the choice had been mine."

Which was extremely sad, given how long Rosalie had been immortal (according to the "Cliff notes" family history from yesterday); Sadie was debating whether or not it would be tactless to ask her if she was okay, but Alice tugged on her sleeve, saying:

"Go on: open your gift!"

So, Sadie pulled the tissue paper out of the gift bag.

(She was so focused on fishing out the bag's contents that she didn't see her friend, Colin, walking over with the intention of asking if it was her birthday or something, and whether she'd sit with her usual study group, and she didn't see Colin hesitate and change course, as Jasper sent a discreet wave of unease through him. Alice flashed a knowing, triumphant look at Jasper. Rosalie and Emmett, of course, saw all of this, but they hadn't the context to question it.)

Out of the bag came a box of Hot Tamales, a chew toy for Brillig, a new case of colored pencils, and a gorgeous, blue, leather-bound journal engraved with the words ' _Sadie L. Gilder's Journal of Undead Psychology'._

"Thank you guys," Sadie said, genuinely. "This is really nice." It was, in actuality, perfect. Exactly how she would have described the ideal gift, if asked and given time to contemplate. _Precognition strikes again; they're really good at gift-giving_. The journal was absolutely beautiful. 

Jasper was smiling, in her peripheral vision, at the improvement to Sadie's mood.

Alice's disclaimer notwithstanding, Sadie wondered if she shouldn't have accepted the gift at all. She had always been a proponent of acknowledging the good and the bad; thanking for the favor and admonishing the slight, and doing her best not to let either reaction taint the other. Proportional in all things, if she could manage it. But right now, she couldn't help suspecting that Alice's unique talent for finding the best possible outcome stood a real chance of weakening her resolve. She was already quite non-confrontational, and who on Earth was naturally equipped to maintain boundaries with someone who actively incentivized one to drop them?

 _Alright, Stockholm Syndrome in five; start the timer,_ Sadie thought, in jest.

If only she didn't know how the two of them hoped this relationship would progress, and if she weren't still torn over the centenarian thing, she probably would have been receptive to dating, or giving it a try at least. As it stood, though...

"'Undead Psychology'?" Rosalie commented. "That's not a real thing."

"Are there no vampire therapists?" Sadie asked. "Your dad's a doctor."

"Well, most vampires don’t have jobs."

"It’s the murder," Emmett contributed.

"Anyway, the field of psychology only _just_ started to get kind of good. Even when _I_ was human, it was pretty bogus; I can’t imagine the truly ancient vampires ever got around to taking an interest in it." Rosalie tossed her hair over her shoulder. "And for what it's worth, Edward and I are technically doctors, too."

"Wait, really?" Sadie said.

"Yes. We go to medical school every now and then, to keep Carlisle's understanding of medicine consistent with modern teachings."

Sadie turned to Alice and Jasper. "And you guys haven't been to medical school?"

"It wouldn't be a good idea for us," Alice said delicately.

"No kidding," Emmett chuckled.

"Glass houses, Emmett."

"Edward and I are the best-controlled in the family," Rosalie summed up. "After Carlisle, of course."

"I see." 'Best-controlled' being a euphemism for 'least likely to eat someone', Sadie gathered. As if eating people was a passive state of being, and _not_ eating people required active concentration; well, that was validating of last night's nightmares, at least. Sadie glanced at the clock and procured her cinnamon roll from its bag; if she wanted to eat it before class started, now was the time to do so.

(Again, Colin began to walk over, and again Jasper dissuaded him with his MAVVs.)

While Sadie ate, Alice took out a sheet of paper (as fancy as foretold) and a lovely-looking fountain pen. Across the top of the page, she wrote out ' _Contract of Ethical Matehood_ ' in lavish, curly calligraphy, then busied herself doodling tiny hearts around the title while Sadie was finishing up her pastry. Jasper wordlessly took Sadie's food wrappings, balled them up, and threw them into the trash can for her.

"Impressive shot," Sadie commented, because it was. She took a swig from her water bottle, to wash everything down. "Okay, first item up for discussion: use of powers."

"I understand that you find my future sight invasive," Alice said preemptively, "but the whole family relies on my ability to predict future threats; if someone in class is going to have some kind of injury, I need to be able to warn everyone to hold their breath. And as I said yesterday, I have to know, when you're alone, that there aren't any predators nearby; if another vampire happened to be passing your house and came across _our_ scent leading to and from, they'd want to investigate." (They _what?_ ) "They'd be curious about why vampires are visiting a human dwelling, and since checking it out would be a spur-of-the-moment decision, I have to stay vigilant all the time."

"It would be even better if we were already there with you," Jasper said pointedly. 

"That would just mean more of your scent leading to and from my house," Sadie said.

"But you would be safe."

"But you would be manufacturing a dependence."

"Only to account for the fact that you're already vulnerable; if we had never been to your house, it would have been less _likely_ that a passerby would bother you, but if it had happened anyway, you would have been helpless without us, and the odds wouldn't have mattered."

"We were very agitated, after that first day of school," Alice explained. "Having to watch you leave at the end of the day was very stressful, and visiting you once you were asleep seemed like a necessity, at the time. And once we'd done it the first time, we had even more reason to keep visiting, because of what our scent could signify to other vampires. So you're right, in a way, that we manufactured a dependence, but it wasn't done to manipulate you; we're genuinely just that desperate."

Sadie didn't say anything in response. It was preferable to think of Alice and Jasper as clumsy, smitten immortal teens than as calculated, near-omniscient creatures of the night, but she felt like the truth was probably some blend thereof. They probably _were_ in as much emotional turmoil as the purported to be, but they knew what they were doing.

"And I know you're worried about the whole 'Do I see you shower?' thing; short answer is yes, I do, but it's really not that big a deal."

"Thanks," Sadie quipped, with a startled, mirthless laugh; Emmett laughed along with her.

Alice cracked a smile, too, but rushed on, "Not what I meant. You know that I think you're perfect. But as a psychic, I see people naked all the time; I'm used to it, the family's used to it. It's not the same as seeing it with my actual senses."

"How is it not the same as seeing it with your actual senses?" Sadie asked.

Alice set down her pen, the better to gesture as she spoke. "The way Edward describes his mind reading, it's indistinguishable from his sense of hearing; he can tell the difference now that he's used to it, but they work in the same way; early on, everyone's thoughts sounded like they were spoken aloud, to him. When he's reading the mind of someone whose thoughts aren't expressed in an auditory format...I can't describe it in full, but from what he's said, when he reads the mind of someone who thinks in pictures, it's like there's some kind of conversion from sight to sound, in his mind. He _hears_ the images, and his mind puts the visuals back together _as_ visuals through interpretation. Not all mind readers perceive things that way, but Edward's mind reading is sound-based. I tend to describe my precognition in terms of sight, because the phrase 'seeing the future' is already how most conceptualize it, and also because when Edward is reading my mind, he perceives my visions as highly visual because his gift has to convert mine to sound and then his interpretation has to convert it back; of course, his processing of it is very quick, but it's still a delay that he's conscious of.

"In truth, the way it works is more...like future _memory_ , than future sight. The way I perceive my visions is the way one would perceive a memory; sight is a major aspect, but there's also sound, a bit of smell, a vague sense of touch and taste, and all of it is filtered through the fact that I'm generating it in my mind. It isn't an experience, it's the imprint of an experience. A memory. I just happen to have it before there's anything to remember."

Sadie's endless curiosity delighted in the speech; she flipped open her new journal and jotted down notes. So intriguing, having it described that way...And what a temptation Edward's mind reading would be now! All those insights into how people thought; it was really going to put Sadie's valuing of privacy to the test.

And now she had so many questions about Alice's visions: if she could have visions about things that she wouldn't actually be present to observe, then what was the perspective? Did future sight have, like, camera angles? A bird's eye view? Or did it function like a hypothetical in which Alice _was_ in the room?

The first bell rang, warning those still in the halls to start making their way to class.

"Okay," Sadie said, setting down her notes. "That was all extremely cool to hear, and thank you for saying it. Do you have voluntary control over your visions?"

"Yes, but my degree of control over them is so effortless that I tend to do it subconsciously; it's a part of the way I process the world."

"Can you decide to skip things? Like, if you're checking the future and you see me in the shower, can you choose to skip ahead?"

"I usually just fast forward, so to speak, not skip. I guess I can stop the vision and start a new one that begins minutes later, but then I risk missing something."

"I mean, that's kind of the idea. You having the visions at all is like putting me under twenty-four-hour surveillance; asking you to skip ahead for a courtesy window of, let's say, five minutes, if you see me naked, isn't just reasonable; it's below the bare minimum."

Alice pressed her lips together but shortly nodded and said, "Okay. If I'm checking your future and I see you naked, I'll skip ahead five minutes."

"And if I'm still naked when you skip ahead, skip again."

Alice nodded once more and started writing the agreement down on the contract page.

Something about her reluctant acquiescence had Sadie asking, "Didn't you see this outcome to the conversation?"

"I did," Alice said, still writing things out. "But like I said: Experiencing it is different."

Pinning that. No matter what seemed like a concession, Alice had gone through this conversation before. She'd had time to plan.

"Jasper," Sadie digressed, turning her attention to the vampire still sitting backwards in his chair. His expression was obscenely innocent and calm, in a way that put her slightly more at ease without him using his MAVVs. (At least, she was pretty sure he wasn't using them.)

Her phone vibrated with a text from Edward: _He's not._

Well, that was something.

Not great that Edward could hear her from here, but good confirmation about the MAVVs.

"I don't really have concerns about the mood _reading_ ," Sadie continued. "Though, if you have any conceptual insights that you want to share, regarding how you perceive and experience other people's emotions, that would be cool."

"Sorta like sense of taste, for me," Jasper said. "The different feelings have different flavors."

Ooh. "What does confusion taste like?"

"Depends on the person. Some people get frustrated when they're confused, and that tastes sour; some people withdraw from things that confuse them, and that's a sort of cloying, numb taste; others overthink things that confuse them, and that tastes like mint." Jasper smiled a striking smile. "Right now, you're curious, and it tastes like cinnamon with sugar."

Sadie felt warm. She twirled one of her braids around her finger and moved on, "Now, the MAVVs, on the other hand..."

Jasper sighed quietly but nodded, as if he'd expected this.

"How potent is your mood control? What’s the extent of it?"

"Remember Saturday?" He asked the question gently, patiently. The fact that he didn't have to elaborate was telling; he didn't even pretend they didn't both know what he meant.

"Yeah, I remember." That blissful calm that had settled over her when they'd been sitting on the couch, the feeling of serenity that had smoothed over everything for a while.

"That’s nearly the extent of it. In the positive direction, at least."

Oh boy. "What’s the extent of the negative?"

Jasper’s expression was very careful. "I’ll never use it that way on you."

"But you do use it that way on some people?"

"When it benefits me to be feared, I can be. But I don’t like the idea of you being afraid."

"And what’s the extent of how negatively you can impact people’s emotions?"

"I’ve caused panic attacks." He said it matter-of-factly. Evenly, but not hard. Like it was normal. "Or riled up people's anger. But I've also helped people to feel happy...who have wanted to. It's a versatile ability."

Sadie blew out her cheeks. "For the record, I think the ethics of how you use your powers in general should be its own conversation, but for right now we can focus on just how you MAVV _me_."

"It's a verb, too, now?" Jasper asked, amused.

"It's a verb, too, now," Sadie confirmed. "It sounds like we should just operate on a strict consent system, where you can only MAVV me if I give you permission."

"Even if it's to make you happy or calm?"

"Kind of especially then; I don't need to be sedated."

"It doesn't compromise your ability to think rationally, and you've noticed every time I've done it. It would only be an additional way for me to help lighten your load."

"Bro, you weren't allowed to hold her bookbag yesterday," Emmett interjected. "Maybe cool it about your MAVVs, for now." And he sent Sadie a smirk; she smiled back.

The second bell rang, and the morning announcements started.

"How about," Alice suggested, with her voice politely lowered as someone talked about the most recent sports victories over the P.A. system, "I go ahead and write down that Jasper can only use his mood powers on you if he's given permission."

"Sounds good."

Alice smiled and wrote out the rule. Sadie took notes on what Jasper had said about the flavors of feelings.

...

For history class, they managed to convince Sadie to sit in the back with them so that they could work out what their approach would be to the issue of vampire separation anxiety (as she put it).

Jasper had already experienced meeting a mate for the first time, with Alice, and he had the perfect memory of a vampire (human memories notwithstanding; he couldn't say what color his childhood home was, or what sort of nose his mother had had), yet somehow he was newly surprised by the way the emotions of their bond progressed. For when he'd first seen Sadie, the infatuation had been instinctive, powerful. Probably the closest a vampire of a hundred and sixty five years give-or-take could come to feeling like a newborn again: all these strong feelings pulling him to action, and his rational mind always a full second behind them. He'd had to get used to tightening his reins on the types of things that seemed like a good idea to Newly In Love Vampire Brain (or NILVB, by Sadie's naming convention).

That was the first stage of mating, though. The stage of externalizing, pursuing, lashing out at the world. Like a newborn vampire.

Somehow, he hadn't thought about the whole next stage of being mated (admittedly overlapping with the first), which was the period of learning more and more about one's mate and becoming hopelessly entangled in every new discovery.

All of this to say, watching Sadie ask questions and negotiate the terms of their relationship (though that word meant "friendship", to her) was enthralling. He was intimately and increasingly aware of how valuable she truly was to them. He and Alice had been an instant match: both of them resourceful and pragmatic and well-suited to controlling the circumstances of their lives; her, high energy (excitement and enthusiasm, bubblegum-sweet) and him quite willing to follow her lead; and most of all, both of them immediately in love. Sadie was the single perfecting addition: similar in many ways, and her compassion and curiosity rounded them out where they were lacking, and it was thrilling to use their respective talents to discover the proper avenues to earning her affection and giving her theirs. She was strong in her beliefs but soft in her temperament, and as much as she didn't like some of their approaches to wooing and caring for her, she did enjoy their conversation and their profuse praises. And she had liked their gift to her this morning, which was good because they would like it to be the first of many.

"We're not doing the break-ins anymore," Sadie said concisely.

"Okay, but how about we just say that we will only do the break-ins if you invite us in?" Alice suggested. "Kind of like the vampires of myth?"

"Fine, but the invitation has to be explicit and verbal. Not vague impressions or subtext." What a clever distinction.

"Alright. We can break in if we secure an explicit, verbal invitation from you."

"Right."

"And we can drive you home from school?" Jasper said, as that was an idea that had already been raised. She would only have taken the bus, anyway.

"Yes, you can drive me home from school," Sadie said. " _Directly_ home from school." Another clever distinction.

"Of course," Alice said. "And we can pick you up from your house in the mornings?"

"Some days," Sadie allowed, "but that's time I spend with my mom; I don't want to sacrifice _all_ of it."

"Of course not." Alice's pen flew across the page, her handwriting never suffering for her speed. 

Jasper decidedly did not think about whether, and to what degree, and to what end, this conversation was going as planned; Edward was farther away, this period, than he had been last period, but still there was a chance he could hear them. He wouldn't let on, if he could. 

"Now," Alice continued, "like we've said, we really want to always follow your rules, so if there's a night when we really are desperate to be near you, what should the protocol be for that?"

Sadie tilted her head, pondering adorably. Her fingers were twisting at her braids again. "You can park outside the house for up to an hour," she decided, "but you can't go so far as to set foot on the lawn."

"Understood." More meticulous scrawling.

Sadie opened her box of Hot Tamales and started eating them. Jasper smiled at the little burst of happiness he tasted as she ate her candy.

...

At lunch, Bella offered to shield her mind again, and Sadie accepted and thanked her and offered up her copy of _Fellowship of the Ring_ for Renesmee to borrow, which Bella took with thanks and a smile. Sadie took a bite out of a carrot stick from her lunch box. Then, she was back to asking all of them questions again. "So, do we know why some people have certain powers, but not everyone?"

"The theory is that the traits we have as humans get amplified," Edward said. "Jasper and I were both intuitive at reading people, hence our respective powers. Bella was already impervious to mental powers as a human, and now she can shield others, as well."

"The implication being that none of the rest of us had interesting enough personalities to earn unique skills," Rosalie drawled.

"Your unique skill is being contrarian," Edward said.

Rosalie threw her apple at him. The two of them seemed to be jesting, though, because Edward smirked slightly when he caught it, and Rosalie did as well.

"So people can already have powers as humans?" Sadie said.

"That's pretty much the only way you can get the really interesting powers," Emmett opined. "Like Benjamin; he's a fella who can control water, fire, wind, and earth, and I'm pretty sure he already had some version of that skill when he was human."

Sadie blinked several times, her eyes going as wide as saucers. "Wait, so there's a vampire out there who's just...the Avatar? It's an option to get bitten and be the Avatar?"

"That's what I said!" Jacob exclaimed. "All that mind mojo's a real bum deal in comparison, right?"

"I can't believe you guys know someone who bends the elements and this is the first I'm hearing of it."

"To be fair, the first you heard of the vampire stuff was, like, yesterday," Emmett said.

"True, true. So, the super senses and strength and speed; what's the deal with that?"

...

"We should address possessiveness next," Sadie mused, in art class.

They were at half a page, with the contract. But then, Alice's handwriting was fairly small. Periodically, Sadie had checked on the wording, to be sure it was what they had discussed, and she found that it was. Pretty much verbatim. Good.

"I can't spend all of my time with you guys; some days, I should be sitting with Colin or Natalie or Kennedy or someone."

"We won't prevent you from having friends," Alice agreed smoothly.

"Including at lunch," Sadie added. "I won't always be sitting with your family."

"If that's what you want, we won't exactly corral you to our table." Alice giggled, convincingly, at the absurdity.

They were seeming pretty tolerant, but Sadie remembered the 'She's ours' moment. She hadn't forgotten that. And she hadn't forgotten their first time in Psych class, how taciturn they'd been with everybody.

"Can we sit with you, when you sit with your friends?" Jasper asked.

Alice clicked her tongue. "I don't think we need to be upwind of Tactile Colin, Jazz."

Jasper considered it, then nodded. "You're right."

"Tactile Colin?" Sadie repeated, unsure whether to laugh at the fairly apt nickname.

Now, Alice smiled grimly. "Another endorsement for my visions: If I hadn't seen, the day before we met you, that Tactile Human Friend was going to put his arm around you in history class, things would have gone very poorly. Luckily, we knew exactly what time to avert our eyes, and everyone is fine." She finished her pronouncement much too cheerfully.

"Do I _want_ you to define 'poorly'?" Sadie asked, rubbing her forehead again.

Alice appeared to genuinely check the future before she answered, "No. You don't."

Sadie almost moved on, but... "Tell me anyway."

(And of course, Alice was right; she hadn't wanted to know.)

...

By math class, they had written down enough rules that Sadie was feeling less urgent in getting more written. It was already more or less guaranteed that they would be continuing work on the contract tomorrow, so she decided instead to direct her efforts to learning more about these people who said they were mated to her. (Still a weird word. So gross.)

"So. What were your human lives like?" she asked. Because it would be rude to just ask, 'How did you end up bitten by a vampire?'.

"Well, I lost all of my memories, before waking up as a vampire in 1920," Alice said, "but recent investigations into my own history prove that my name was Mary Alice Brandon and I was institutionalized in an insane asylum for my psychic powers."

"Oh." Alarm filled Sadie. "I am...so sorry."

"Don't be," Alice laughed, with a soothing smile. "I don't remember it. I don't even remember who turned me. And anyway, if Mary Alice Brandon had to die for me to meet you, that's a trade I'm willing to make."

Sadie wasn't sure how to take that compliment, so she flashed an awkward smile and gracefully moved on, "Jasper?"

"I don't remember my human life very well, either," he said. "None of us do. When you get enhanced senses and improved memory, the old human thoughts feel too muddy and imprecise to hang onto. Couldn't point out my childhood bedroom in a lineup."

"That's terrible," Sadie said, frowning.

"Oh, but then you get perfect memory," Alice stressed. "And now that humans have access to good photo and video technology, you can hold onto human memories as long as you want."

Sadie couldn't help smiling at Alice's transparent attempts at selling her on vampirism. One last point of tension, though, before this went any further. "So, I've noticed your slight Southern accent," she said to Jasper, "and I've subtracted a hundred and sixty-five from the current year, and I've got to ask..."

"I didn't have any slaves," Jasper said preemptively, "and I wasn't pro-slavery."

"Phew," Sadie said. "Good. That's one thing I don't have to freak out about; love that for me." She thought about reopening her Hot Tamales in celebration that that question-shaped load had been lifted, but she figured she'd had enough sugar already, today.

(She didn't notice Jasper's whole posture slackening, albeit marginally, with relief.)

"Can you come and visit our house this weekend?" Alice asked. "Actually, this time?"

Sadie tapped her fingers on the desk. "I'm thinking, Saturday with the vampires, Sunday with the wolves?" she suggested.

Alice sighed. "Do you absolutely _have_ to hang out with the wolves? I won't be able to see you."

"I wouldn't even know you'd been breaking into my house if it weren't for Leah; I value their company." (She'd finally gotten a reply from Leah, during history class. The text had started with an explanation that Leah hadn't been able to answer because she'd been in wolf form earlier, and a suggestion that she should text the wolf group chat, instead, for that very reason; Sadie hadn't yet read more than that. Like yesterday, she would read the rest at home.)

Alice pursed her lips, evidently still displeased about how Leah had impacted things. Jasper looked similarly bothered.

So as not to get Leah into unnecessary conflict, Sadie added, "Hey. Her honesty is why we're able to have these conversations, now, instead of the vague ones where I was confused all the time...minty fresh though my confusion might taste to _some_ people." (Jasper and Alice both cracked a smile.) "I'm glad she told me."

"Well then," Alice said sweetly, "I guess we have no choice but to be glad, too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should be cool and _not_ state my own implications explicitly in the notes, but the fact that curiosity tastes like cinnamon to Jasper and Sadie enjoys both cinnamon rolls and Hot Tamales (cinnamon candy) is deliberate. The fact that they gift her those kinds of sweets is Jasper and Alice trying to be cute, in a subtle way; like, it's partially because Sadie loves those snacks and partially because cinnamon is such a major taste in her emotional aura that it's, like, symbolic to them. (But I've ruined the subtlety by drawing attention to it. Sorry, I couldn't help myself.)
> 
> I'm posting this so, so early in the morning, so there is a chance I'll look over it when I wake up and find that I have to edit it. Hopefully my judgement isn't too horribly impaired by sleepiness, lol. 
> 
> Please comment! And thank you guys so much for your thoughts thus far.


End file.
